posted on September 28, 2000 08:24:33 PM new
I've gotten a couple of disconcerning e-mails from eBayers who are having problems viewing my auctions on eBay. I am on AOL, working on an IBM compatible computer. My listings look right to me - but....
one eBayer writes:
Sorry to be difficult, but I checked your site again, made sure I scrolled
all the way down, and there is still no way to enter a bid on your site.
Your graphics take up all the room following the ebay DESCRIPTION header;
there is no "BID" section to enter a bid.
I did see that someone had been able to make a bid, but I don't see how they
did it. I am using Outlook Express on an iMac platform. I have been using
ebay for over a year and have NEVER seen an item listing that didn't have a
BID area.
I honestly don't know what to do next. I'd like to place a bid on your item
but can't see how it can be done.
Any suggestions?
Another eBayer writes:
There is no discription or picture coming up on your items. I hit
reload & still no words or pictures. Please let me know the FV item #,
size, amount, and discription of the trees up for auction.
Thanks,
How can I figure out what I am doing wrong with my html - making some browsers unable to view or bid - Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
eBay id - Lavish*Baubles
posted on September 28, 2000 08:38:45 PM new
Very strange. I looked at a couple of your auctions. On IE, the fonts and numbers are quite large! On Netscape they are normal at the top, but below the description in the bid area the fonts are LARGE. Also, on 448843069 there is no description at all on Netscape, but OK on IE. I only checked the first couple of auctions. I don't know much about HTML, I hope someone can help you figure that out!
posted on September 28, 2000 08:43:48 PM new
I don't know if you were concerned about a specific auction or all of them, but I looked up your ID on eBay, and the second auction I tried had something of a reverse problem.
All I saw in Netscape (with JavaScript OFF) in the description section was a horizontal line <hr>
I checked the source, and noticed there was plenty of description code, but part of it looked very odd to me (a few extra spaces inserted to prevent UBB):
Things look okay until the series of <html>, <head>, and <title> tags. These normally belong only at the top of an HTML file, and eBay owns the top, so to speak (i.e. your part starts and ends in the middle of the page). I think (but am less certain) that the <meta> and <style> tags also belong at the top.
It looks like you designed your section as a separate webpage of its own, then put it wholesale into eBay's page.
Again, this actually behaves the opposite of what you originally described in general, but it could be because I'm looking in Netscape instead of IE.
(Only the </table> tag is added, the rest is what's already there. )
There's a lot of repetition and unnecessary close tags, but they shouldn't harm anything.
I tried a local copy with the fixes, and it now all shows up.
One final point, and this isn't a problem fix, just a style note: The single quote characters ( ' ) used within tags is non-standard. The double quote ( " ) characters are used instead.
<td align="center" bgcolor="FFFFFF" >
instead of
<td align='center' bgcolor='FFFFFF' >
[ Edited to shorten a line to prevent horizontal scrolling. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Sep 28, 2000 09:09 PM ]
posted on September 28, 2000 09:22:48 PM new
dc91320 - Thank you so much for taking the time to help with this problem!
I am a very slowww study when it comes to html - don't know what UBB is either
I am pretty lost, but soooo impressed with your solution to my delemma!
Could you "lay out" the solution exactly the way I should re-do the html.
When you say to precede with </table> - isn't that a closing tag?
Sorry to be so thick -
Thanks
Then come a block of lines that start with <H4>, <P , or <font . These are okay.
After that come these three lines:
</td>
</tr>
</blockquote>
which should look like this instead:
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</blockquote>
This took care of the problems I saw, and it will probably work for everyone else, but I cannot guarantee this.
I'm afraid this is the best I can describe what you should do, because I'm not familiar with how you yourself create/edit returns into eBay.
Again, though, it looks sort of like you developed your description section as a separate page first, probably in a webpage editor, then copied the entire page into the eBay description.
I'm not sure there's an easy way to tell you how to avoid this in the future, except at least one of your other auctions looked fine to me, so it's almost like you have two different ways of creating pages.
[ Edited for very slight clarification in first paragraph. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Sep 28, 2000 09:40 PM ]
posted on September 28, 2000 10:02:28 PM new
Thanks again dc9a320 -
The thing that kind of confuses me is that you mention <blockquote>
I don't have the word blockquote in the description - this is how it typed the html into ebays description box:
<tr>
<td align='center' bgcolor='FFFFFF'>
<font face='sans-serif' size='4' color='000000'>
<b><html>
<head>
<title>Lavish*Baubles</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
<style TYPE="text/css">
TD {font-size:14pt}
</style>
</head>
<H4><B><I>Easy Shopping, Speedy shipping with use of your Visa/MasterCard or American Express card</I></B></H4>
<p align=center><font point-size="15" color="#00008b" size="5"><I><U>~ Forma Vitrum ~ </U></I></B></font></p>
This is just part of it - but you get the idea - I don't mention <blockquote> at all -
Does this above html look like you are seeing it?
When I list, I try some html, and look at a preview on eBays sell item page - eBay has a screen where you can check to see what the auction will look like before you post it. It always looks right in the preview -
Perhaps its a problem with the very top. I think that ebay puts it in. When I started listing auctions, I would just look at someones auction that I liked and repeated the html "pattern" or "layout" of that auction.
As time has gone on - I have just copied html from my old auctions, and I think some of what ebay puts in has ended up in what I am adding.
Don't mean to give you a major project - I thought that this would give you some insite on how html can end up looking so screwy
Can you tell me which one of my auctions looked fine to you. I thought I was doing them all the same - Perhaps this will reveal the difference.
Thanks again for any help you can give.
Best,
Lavish*Baubles
posted on September 28, 2000 10:27:44 PM new
I went through all of your auctions with IE 5.5 and there wasn't a bit of problem with any of them.
Then I went in with Netscape 4.7 and... Wow, what problems! Your descriptions were missing on all of them. I ran one auction page and through an HTML checker and it found a vast multitude of errors including multiple, and I mean more than 30, end tags for tags that were never used. There were many size end tags with no beginnings. There were Font ends with no beginnings.
Apparently IE was much more forgiving than Netscape. It appears you have eliminated any possible bids from Netscape users in this round of auctions. Ouch. Use one of the HTML verifiers to track down all of the errors and see if things don't clear up for you.
posted on September 28, 2000 10:31:30 PM new
lavishbaubles,
You're having some problems similar to ones that AW'ers helped me out with at the beginning of the week. Many came to my rescue, but dc9a320 and Rainy Bear posted this link, which is a lifesaver.
I downloaded this program (didn't take long), loaded it and have used it to fix several auction descriptions and am checking all my new descriptions before I post them. It takes about 5 seconds to copy an HTML piece, paste it to Validator and click to run the check. Once you fix all the problems in your template, it's just a matter of routinely checking new descriptions to make sure nothing got messed up. I'm very impressed with how easy this program is to use, and it's FREE (for the lite version).
posted on September 28, 2000 10:52:46 PM newLavishbaubles: Oh, I see now. That's interesting. I see eBay has all the </blockquote> and repetitious closing tags I noted earlier (probably to make sure they close any tags that a seller forgot to close, so the rest of the eBay parts look normal -- they should add a few </table> tags to that (would save some people some headaches). This does not help you though, so don't forget what I said about the </blockquote> Okay, nevermind that part.
The only other auction of yours I checked -- the one that looked fine -- is:
<tr>
<td align="center" bgcolor="FFFFFF">
<font face="sans-serif" size="4" color="000000">
<b>Lavish*Baubles</b>
<H4><B><I>Easy Shopping, Speedy shipping with use of your Visa/MasterCard or American Express
card</I></B></H4>
<p align=center><font point-size="15" color="#00008b" size="5"><I><U>~ Forma Vitrum ~</U></I></B></font></p>
[ .. then the rest of whatever lines you omitted above, but make sure you end with ..: ]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Here's what I did to what you showed to get what I showed:
1) Got rid of: <html>, <head>, <title>, </title>, <meta .... >, and everything between the <style ...> and </style> tags.
2) Added </b> right after "Lavish*Baubles"
3) Showed that you need to end with the </td>, </tr>, and </table> tags, especially the </table>
4) Replaced single-quote ( ' ) characters with double-quote ( " ) characters in the tags. (Browsers are very forgiving on this, but I thought I'd show the "correct" way. )
Hope this helps!
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
posted on September 28, 2000 11:05:09 PM newAvaloncourt: Actually, in looking at Lavishbauble's questions, I just realized (and have verified by looking at a completely unrelated auction), that eBay injects this series of end tags into every auction, right after whatever the seller enters in the Description section:
(I broke what was two lines into three so the one long line wouldn't force horizontal scrolling here. )
I think eBay is throwing up these extra closers just in case the seller failed to close some of their tags. (They should have thrown in some </table> tags while they were at it, to save the current grief. )
This way, the Bidding section that follows won't be affected by unclosed seller tags in the Description section. I hadn't realized that when first writing to Lavish, and ended up confusing the issue a little.
However, Lavish was missing a </table> in at least one auction, and had all the extra "header" style tags that I've already noted.
Islander: I have to decline credit for posting the htmlvalidator link, but it is a good one for almost all pages. However, I wonder if, with what I just said about all the extra closing tags (and who knows what else) that eBay adds, whether using the validator will only confuse some sellers more than it helps. Can one choose an option in the validator to ignore extra closing tags while still flagging missing closing tags? However, if you and others have had success with it, by all means continue and recommend it!
Netscape is less forgiving because Microsoft played fast and loose with the rules, which can be both "good" and "bad." However, neither minds extra end tags as much as Netscape hates missing </table> tags (and Lavish had a missing one in at least one auction).
[ Edited to add a parenthetical observation. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Sep 28, 2000 11:07 PM ]
posted on September 28, 2000 11:40:57 PM new
I want to thank everyone who has added to this thread. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your help! dc9a320- "beyond the call" thanks so much~
I have added </table> to the end of the html in all of the auctions that I have listed on eBay that have not yet received bids (You can revise if no bids have been made).
If someone could check a couple of the auctions with Netscape - That will tell us if that was the majority of the problem.
Again, Thanks for all the help -
Lavish*Baubles on eBay
posted on September 28, 2000 11:53:45 PM new
Thanks Jema,
Think I'll sleep on it a bit - hahaha
I'll try html validator in the morning. Thanks for checking for me. The saga continues......
[ edited by lavishbaubles on Sep 28, 2000 11:55 PM ]
posted on September 29, 2000 06:29:58 AM new
The one I was looking at hasn't changed, but it doesn't look like </table> was added to that one, though.
Otherwise, sorry it didn't work out. I know the missing </table> is definitely a big problem in Netscape, and think the other things are issues too (maybe not Description killers, but not good to use either), but maybe I'm missing something else in an additional auction I didn't look at.
posted on September 29, 2000 07:57:33 AM new
I've checked my html with a html Validator - I made the corrections on the following auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=450985057
I would appreciate it if someone could check this auction on Netscape to see if the auction appears correctly. I've got my fingers crossed - XX
Thanks
Lavishbaubles
