posted on July 13, 2004 03:17:59 PM new
On July 12, 11:00am, eBay announced the following Coming Soon change:
This week, we will be changing the way the item description area of the view item page displays. This change will improve the view item page performance for members. Because the item description content will be now be cached by browsers, buyers and sellers will see noticeable speed improvements when they view the same item more than once, or when they refresh a view item page. This is especially important during the last few minutes of a listing, or when members are on slow dialup connections.
Please note: As a result of this change, sellers who have used html tags to customize the item page outside the item description area (to change font color for links outside the item description, for instance) will now only be able to customize the area within the item description.
Unfortunately, eBay's implementation appears to have changed how your custom HTML behaves INSIDE the item description as well as attempts to customize areas outside the item description. This impact appears to affect all eBay listings and are not related directly to listings from Vendio or any other third parties.
Our testing indicates formatting using our custom templates is ok, however, using your own HTML may make listings default to eBay's chosen fonts. The most popular cases we've seen are uses of header tags ( < H1 >, < H2 >, < H3 > ) and more commonly the paragraph tag < p >. We have provided this information to eBay along with a recommended change that preserves the intent of their announcement but returns your ability to use custom HTML in item descriptions. In the meantime, we suggest using < br >< br > instead of < p > for paragraph breaks and avoiding using header tags in your custom HTML.
We'll update you as we hear or see progress on eBay's implementation.
