ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
If you copied your description from your website or from a retail website, that is most likely how the code got copied into your description. We see a lot of issues like this where the seller disclaims putting it there because they were unaware of the underlying code on the page being copied.
It might be useful to scan your various seller IDs using this online tool to make sure that Active Content has not snuck in.
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContentScanner.htm
For new listings or relists, eBay's "Description Checker" on their listing form should alert if something like that is ever pulled into the description.
@aurora777_58 wrote:So we're not allowed to have scrolling bars anymore from places like Auctiva? I saw one yesterday still in someone's store, that's why I asked, because I sure miss mine!
The scrolling promo galleries are still allowed, but the providers must construct them without Active Content. Most of the providers have reworked their codes to be compliant under the new rules. In all cases, the old code must be removed because the compliant code is entirely different.
@dhbookds wrote:
Stupid question, I should test it myself.......but if one creates a listing from the sell page on the ebay site.......does the new listing automatically contain the mobile friendly script (tag, whatever the term is)? I use TL and have embedded it in my template there, but just wondering?
thanks
I can answer this one.
No.
You would think that eBay would auto-enter this "required" code when using the SYI, but they do not.
I list using the SYI ... And you either have to manually enter it, use the "custom insert" function (basically a macro ..which is what I do) or click the "mobile friendly" link and then "fix it for me"
I'll try to explain why the tags are not automatically added.
There are two tags that eBay's "Mobile Description Checker" will add for you upon request, and then they give you the opportunity to accept or reject after you see what it does to your description.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
The above Viewport meta tag is not required — just recommended, and it does not automatically make a page mobile friendly. The function performed by that tag is to tell the mobile browser that your page will already flex and wrap on its own to fit the device so the browser does not need to shrink everything down to fit. See where it sets scale to "one"? That means no shrinking. Instead, if the page is too large, scrollbars are added.
If your page is not mobile friendly, then you may not want to add that tag because it will force your page to scroll instead of simply shrinking to fit. And you may or may not want to add scrollbars depending on whether scrolling is required to read the rest of a sentence or whether there is just a column of fluff way over there that you don't care about.
Plain text should almost always wrap just fine, and adding the Viewport meta tag is optional because the mobile view for plain text will be just fine with or without the tag. However, there are three cases where plain text won't wrap:
- Long runs of the spacebar, period, or underscore.
- Long words written in a very large font.
- Text that uses the <pre> tag to force exact spacing.
<style>img{max-width:100%;}</style>The image styling tag that eBay offers, above, will automatically adjust pictures found in the description. For a simple set of product photos or logo added to the description, this tag will work quite well, as all it does is tell the picture to not exceed the width of the container (meaning... shrink as needed).
However, if the picture already has BOTH width and height assigned in the underlying HTML code, the tag below is better, as it will allow both the width and height to adjust, thus avoiding squished or stretched photos where the aspect ratio is lost.
<style>img{max-width:100%;height:auto;}</style>
Photos and graphics that are found in more complex templates or that are keyed to height instead of width, or that are contained in something like a table, are not going to perform as well with the above image styling tag. Custom templates with mobile-friendly stylesheets and graphics might even be corrupted by that tag, so it's not going to work for everyone. And that is why it is not automatically added.
Additionally, if the description has no photos or graphics at all, the tag has no function and won't fix anything (won't hurt anything either).
