CSS in eBay adverts

  • Thread starter Ken in Melbourne Australia
  • Start date
K

Ken in Melbourne Australia

I've just starting selling with eBay and having some
problems with the restrictions of only writing the html
within eBays page body section.
The advert I wanted should have looked like
http://JYPES.COM or http://brand1ng.com (both the same
html except for the different CSS and the sexy pictures in
JYPES.COM)
I had thought that it was illegal in html to have a
<style> </style> tag pair block in the body section so I did
all my styles as style attributes within the other html
tags. The result can be seen at http://jypes.com/new/ebay.htm

There are a lot of problems with not being able to use a
<style> block.

I have since found out that regardless of whether is is
legal to have <style> tags in the body, it actually works in
some if not most browsers and many ebay adverts use it.

Question 1) Can anybody tell me, the negatives of using
<style> tags in the body? Is there any common browser that
refuses to look at them. Do they upset the search engine
spiders? etc.

Question 2)
Is there any links or websites relating to the specific
problems encountered in writing html for ebay?

Question 3)
Early experiments with <style> section within ebay body
section has shown the following results with the following code:

<STYLE type=text/css>
html body div#csstest p#ptest {
color: #1F1 !important:
font:900 36px Kids, "Scruff LET", fantasy !important;
}
div#csstest a#atest1 {
color:#F55 !important;
}
</STYLE>
<div id="csstest">
<P id="ptest">This is some text in a paragraph.</p>
<A id="atest1" href="http://jypes.com/">First test Link</A>
</div>

Results:
I.E.6 Obeys all 3 CSS style commands
Netscape 7.1 Obeys Color for Paragraph and Color for the
links but disobeys the Paragraph Font command.
Mozilla disobeys both the Color and Font for Paragraph
but obeys the Color for the Link.
Opera 7.5 disobeys all 3 CSS style commands.

Is there any way that I can get better consistency than this
on the basics of color and font?

Question 4)
eBay places the users html within a div frame which is
within a table cell within a table which is within 2 more
layers of tables. Should I try to close all of these before
my html and then start them up again when I finish? I tried
both ways on the above code and didn't get any difference.

Question 5)
Is there any advantage in trying to enclose the <style>
block in a second <head> block or is this even worse than
just having a <style> block in the <body> section?

If you can't answer all 5 please just answer what you can.

Many thanks

Ken
 
A

Andy Dingley

I had thought that it was illegal in html to have a
<style> </style> [,...] in the body section

It's illegal, it works. For approximate values of "works". Scoping can
be a bit odd.
tag pair block

or "element" as we like to call it.

To be compliant, flatten out your CSS and do most of it in-lined through
style attributes on the relevant elements. However you can't use
pseudo-selectors (like :hover) by this route, so you might still want to
use an embedded stylesheet.

For eBay, just do it and stop worrying about it. Their pages are already
pretty non-compliant, a little more won't hurt.

In fact for eBay, you don't need it. I've seen plenty of animated
cartoons, cursor trails, nasty backgrounds and even sounds. None of them
made me want to buy anything.


This might amuse you (read the source)
http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/msnfeed.asp

The problem it solves was to offer a "feed" as a literal HTML fragment,
ready for self-contained direct inclusion in another page.
 
D

dorayme

From: Ken in Melbourne Australia said:
I've just starting selling with eBay and having some
problems with the restrictions of only writing the html
within eBays page body section.
The advert I wanted should have looked like
http://JYPES.COM or http://brand1ng.com (both the same
html except for the different CSS and the sexy pictures in
JYPES.COM)
I had thought that it was illegal in html to have a
<style> </style> tag pair block in the body section so I did
all my styles as style attributes within the other html
tags. The result can be seen at http://jypes.com/new/ebay.htm

etc

I do know that a long running ad has appeared in eBay with css info, and
been submitted via the "html text area" in the form of a head, title, body
and so on and just worked fine. In other words, there is a head, there is
style in that submitted head and there is a body and it all goes thru the
ebay sausage machine and looks fine. You can see
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6969299680&ssPageName=
ADME:L:DS:AU:8 for an example. Sure, it is not the finest thing in html or
css on the planet but it works fine as far as I can see... Sorry, I have not
looked into all the questions you asked. I guess I am saying, don't worry
too much about eBay.

BTW, ... <grin> ... special discounts to anyone on this list as there never
was a better and more lovable set of bastards... (this is an Australian term
of endearment)


dorayme
 

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