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1
- Character Entities
2 - Using Front Page to create an
eBay Listing Description
3 -
Colors with Hexidecimal Number Values
more
eBay tips...
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FrontPage and your eBay Item Description
It is possible to create professional item descriptions without actually
hardcopying the HTML around your text. You can use a web editor. My favorite is
Microsoft FrontPage™. It isn't expensive and you can do lots of cool stuff
with it.
A web editor like FrontPage is the web page-based equivalent of a word
processor. Instead of typing in your HTML tags to achieve some text formatting
and then checking the results in a web browser, you can create your description
inside a window in FrontPage exactly the same way you would create and format a
document in Microsoft Word™.
This is a great way to save time, especially when you are creating complex
table structures (for example, nested tables - a real headache to create by
hand). There are a few simple steps to follow and a few possible pitfalls to
avoid. I will outline them in order below:
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First, start FrontPage. (Fig. 1)
(This assumes you have FrontPage installed on your computer. If
not, visit the Microsoft web site or your local computer/software/office
supplies merchant in order to purchase a copy.)
Fig 1.
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When FrontPage opens, you should see (a larger version of) the screen below.(
Fig. 2)
Fig. 2
If your copy of FrontPage didn't open a new page by default, go to File,
New,
Page to open one.
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Type in your eBay item description directly into the screen view marked
"Normal" . The tabs for screen view are at the bottom of the
window. They are marked "Normal", "HTML", and
"Preview."
Format the text using the tools available on the Toolbar. Using the
"Table" command, I have created
a multi-celled table with black backgrounds and white font for my listing text and
picture. Looks pretty good! (Fig. 3)
For more information on how to create a page with various colors, tables,
cell arrangements, etc in Front Page, click the Help link on the Front Page
menu command bar)
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Fig. 3
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Once you have your listing looking exactly like you want it to look, click
on the "HTML" tag on the bottom of the FrontPage window (Fig. 4)
Fig. 4
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This will show you an editable "view" of the HTML behind
the page you have just created.
The next step involves highlighting certain HTML formatted text on this
window and then selecting it to copy into either a Notepad file or directly into
the Text box on the eBay Sell Your Item page. Do not copy
all of the HTML text!
Highlight and copy only the text between and excluding the first
<body> tag and the closing </body> tag. (Fig 5.)
Fig. 5
The caution here is to not copy anything above and including the
<body> tag. Likewise, do not copy anything below and including the
</body> tag. The tags outside of this area can possibly mess up your item
description on the eBay page in such a way that other viewers won't be able to
read the description. At worst, they won't be able to bid at all!
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Once you have copied the HTML between the two <body> tags on the HTML view
screen, you can paste it directly into the Description box on the eBay Sell Your Item
page (Fig. 6)
Fig. 6
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You can also copy and paste the HTML formatted text into a Notepad for use
later in other eBay listing descriptions.
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