Hi Everyone,
We are getting very close to the end of our redesign which is quite a radical change from our current system, we are going for a much cleaner and simpler layout which will at last be "responsive" which means it will shrink down into just about any sized browser. The site looks best in full HD but will work ok now in a tab in Safari on an iPhone. This is a recent new requirement from Google
Launch date is soon (I know, I know.....!) but it will be in June, mainly due to the fact that we've decided to rebuild over 30 million photos to regular dimensions to enable them to show smoothly in the new sliding gallery systems we have throughout the site.
Anyways, this thread is just a heads up to get everyone ready for the change so it won't be a big shock on moving day when you find things aren't how they were before.
1. The HTML tag element "bgcolor" is now obsolete, I know a few of you still use this in your descriptions but it will cause problems, especially within <table> tags. Just swap bgcolor="#cccccc" to style="background-color:#cccccc;"
2. Listing Notices will all be plain text. You can change yours now if you wish but we will be stripping all HTML from notices when we launch.
3. Photos. For larger screens we do make use of the real estate and show large images around the site. Always make sure you upload photos of at least 800px on their longest side to make the most of the new layout. We will also be saving the "original" photos from launch day to enable magnifying glass zooming at really high resolutions so the bigger the photo the better from now on. Also, just a reminder to those who don't already know, listings with old photos that still have eBid logos on are not uploaded to Google Shopping so we recommend you update these also.
4. We will be allowing a large jpg background for eBid Stores (optional) so you may want to start searching for a relevant high quality photo you can upload to add a bit more branding to your eBid Store. 1920px width recommended.