Section 159. About Including HTML on eBay Auction Pages

159. About Including HTML on eBay Auction Pages

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

2 Use HTML Tags

6 About Proper HTML Coding

157 Jazz Up Text and Headlines with HTML

158 Colorize and Change Fonts and Add Effects with HTML

SEE ALSO

131 Format Your Description with eBay's HTML Editor

Now you know the basics of HTML, but how do you go about using HTML tags on eBay? Keep in mind that on eBay you fill out a form to create an auction listing. After that form is filled out, the auction site automatically creates your listing, which is, in fact, an HTML page. The best way to include HTML on your eBay auction page is to create your HTML-enhanced text in Notepad or some other text-editing program, copy all the HTML to the Windows or Mac Clipboard, and then paste the encoded text from the Clipboard into the Sell Your Item form on eBay.

NOTE

Different browsers might display HTML differently. HTML can't completely control how each browser displays pages. So, the headline sizes, font sizes, and other features of the page can look different on different browsers. All browsers can display standard HTML commands, but a lot of HTML is nonstandard that is, it might work fine on some browsers but not on others. You should therefore use simple HTML commands; if you want your pages to look good on every browser, test the pages with different browsers.

Here are a few important things to keep in mind when using HTML on eBay:

• You can't use HTML in your auction title HTML codes interfere with eBay's search function so people won't find your item when searching. Furthermore, eBay doesn't recognize HTML codes in auction titles and won't display the effects even if you choose to use them.

• Review your HTML before and after posting it Nothing can make you look worse than presenting a sloppy -looking auction listing with odd commands, characters , and spaces showing. Review your HTML-enhanced text before pasting it into the Sell Your Item form, and then review the final listing carefully before posting it. You can easily make tiny errors in HTML that have big consequences when your page is posted.

  To review your HTML, make sure that you've coded it in Notepad. Then save the code as a file with an .html extension (for example, testauction.html ). After you've saved it, open the file: Select File, Open ; browse to the folder where you've put the file; and open the file. You can now preview the HTML. If there's a problem, fix it in Notepad, open the file in your browser again, and check whether the problem is fixed. Keep previewing and editing the code until you've got it right.