ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
1 BEST ANSWER
Accepted Solutions
I reviewed your referenced item http://ebay.com/itm/272573017378 and if your other items differ by much, there may be other issues to address.
1) eBay's Listing Designer frame will not be a problem. The frame graphics exist outside of your description.
2) The "share_your_items" script from 3dsellers.com near the top of all you listings will need to be removed. Find it with this tool:
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContentSandbox.htm
3) One of the images that prevents your template from being mobile friendly is the PowerSeller/TopRatedSeller graphic. Since eBay does not allow using that designation inside the description, that graphic should be removed.
4) Additionally, and this is a big one, with your graphics embedded in the description as base64 encoding, the character count in your listing is almost at the 500,000 character limit that eBay allows for a description. That will make it hard to add compensating codes. If your graphics were saved in a different format, the code would probably shrink to half.
Most nicely formatted listings, with a few external image tags and some pleasing formatting and structure, will not exceed about 10K to 20K characters without the images. So you can see that 500K is a HUGE number.
To put this in perspective, this fully loaded template with every kind of widget and candy fluff is still only 68K characters (photos are external).
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381975690938
However, on the plus side for embedding base64 images, the graphics will load with the template instead of waiting for an external server to respond, but this should only be used for lightweight graphics.
5) At the bottom of your code, contributing to the load, are 35,000 characters of OfficeDocumentSettings that have nothing to do with the listing. That content should be removed as a courtesy to visitors.
6) Without knowing what other graphics you might have, this is a somewhat generic set of media queries to shrink your images on narrow devices. It would normally be added below other stylesheets, but you should be able to add it to the top or bottom of your listing:
<style>
@media(max-width:920px){img{max-width:800px;}}
@media(max-width:800px){img{max-width:600px;}}
@media(max-width:600px){img{max-width:480px;}}
@media(max-width:480px){img{max-width:300px;}}
</style>
7) These two tools are designed to locate your listings with issues and to assist in manually correcting them. I used them in evaluating your listing.
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContentScanner.htm
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContentSandbox.htm
A third tool, coming soon, will provide a mechanism for bulk updating the changes. Because of the size of your codes, you may not be able to use eBay's bulk editing tool.
The bulk scanner is here, and it shows that all 26 of your items need to be repaired.
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContentScanner.htm
After you run the scan, click the EXAMINE button on each colored row to open the Sandbox tool. On the Sandbox tool, scroll down to the "Filtered" tab where you can copy the repaired code and paste it into the HTML tab of eBay's description editor. There are some screenshots below the Filtered tab to help you understand.
The bulk scanner is finding link Targets that have a problem and is coloring them. How you deal with it is up to you, but I recommend repair.
I'll explain:
Links that do not open in a new blank page, that don't "target a blank" page, will try to open in the same page, which happens to be inside the description. For many years, eBay had solved this problem by adding a script to the bottom of every item description to make all links open in a new page. eBay was temporarily adding the target="_blank" attribute for us by using a script.
When eBay applies Active Content sandboxing to all of our listings, eBay will no longer be able to add that fix-it script just like we will no longer be able to use scripts. So eBay asks that we manually fix all of our links.
Now here is the issue:
When sandboxing is applied to our listings, the Active Content rules will still allow links to open, but if they open inside the description, the new page is going to be shoehorned into that smaller description area. Additionally, if the new page contains any scripts, then sandboxing will block those scripts. Thus, pages that try to open inside the description are going to fail to appear, or aren't going to function correctly.
In my experimentation with my Firefox browser, I found that opening a link to my other items inside the description would cause the description to go blank with no way to gracefully recover. The browser back arrow took me back to the search page.
This is an unhappy situation for both buyer and seller.
So, if the links point to your eBay store or other items for sale, then absolutely fix them. If the links are credit links to some third-party widget and you think they are too much trouble to fix, then you can probably ignore them because few people click those credit links.
More than you wanted to know, I presume, but sometimes knowing the WHY will help to make better decisions.
When you run the scan and then click the EXAMINE button on each, the Sandbox tool will open. That tool will generate repaired code that you can paste back into your item description when you revise your item. I suspect there is some misunderstanding at that part: either not understanding that the listing must be manually revised, or not picking up the corrected code.
So, when the Sandbox tool opens, scroll down and click the "Filtered" tab. When it opens you will see your repaired listing code displayed in that window. At the bottom left of that tab you will see a button to open your item for revision.
When you click that button and eBay's listing form opens, select the HTML tab or HTML view on eBay's editor and delete all the code there. Then copy the code from the Sandbox tool and paste it into the empty eBay HTML box. When you switch back to eBay's standard editing tab, you will see the corrected code and can clean up any left over credits. Then save your listing revision.
