What the heck is with the subset prices on eBay lately???
http://tinyurl.com/2db95zj (http://tinyurl.com/2db95zj)
http://tinyurl.com/23q7sxb (http://tinyurl.com/23q7sxb)
I know the last one wasn't labelled as well but it was in the right section. It should've brought more.
Sargeguy, how do you capture the URL for the item for sale on ebay? I see the item number, is that the secret? Thanks, Frank (knarfc)
Frank, he used "Tinyurl" to create the link. It shortens those lengthy url's.
http://tinyurl.com/
Quote from: Dennis Markham on November 12, 2010, 08:02:55 AM
Frank, he used "Tinyurl" to create the link. It shortens those lengthy url's.
http://tinyurl.com/
I have never used tinyurl other than to click on one provided by someone else. I have always assumed that it is just a temporary link that would expire at some time. I assume this because considering the short length of the tinyurl as compared to the number of possible web sites to link to and the number of users, they must reuse the same tinyurl on a regular basis.
That didn't appeal to me because if you save it for future it won't likely work very far into the future. I know that it probably doesn't matter for something like an ebaY auction becasue all the information eventually disappears anyway.
Does anyone know if I am anywhere near correct or way off base?
Terry
No, the addresses created by url shorteners like tinyurl are permanent. Well... that is, permanent as long as the url shortening service exists.
Because they use numbers and letters a 7 digit address can have 78,364,164,096 (78 billion!) possible combinations. So, they'd appear to be ascending slowly, and there's lots to go around without having to reassign them.
We had problems in the past with long URL's messing up the borders of the Forum pages. If the desired URL isn't as wide as page it's not a problem. But those long ones, with three lines will cause a few problems for some browsers, depending on what size the user has set.
The problem with just listing an eBay auction by URL is that in a few weeks the topic of discussion has disappeared. It works for immediate reference but not for future reference.
Here's a posting from the past about using shorter URL's.
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=1109.0
Terry:
Notice that the URL is followed by 7 digits, each capable of going from 0-9 plus a-z. So the total number of symbols per digit is 36. Since you have seven digits, you can count up to 36 raised to the 7th power minus 1 (to handle the zero).
Therefore, if my numbers are correct, you can encode 7.83641641 x 10^^10 (about 80 billion) different URLs. That is plenty of capacity before they need to repeat them again. In the worst case, adding just another digit pretty much gives you capacity your brain can't handle. ;D ;D ;D
Jorge: Brilliant minds think alike! :)
Quote from: Dennis Markham on November 12, 2010, 11:19:36 AM
We had problems in the past with long URL's messing up the borders of the Forum pages. If the desired URL isn't as wide as page it's not a problem. But those long ones, with three lines will cause a few problems for some browsers, depending on what size the user has set.
The problem with just listing an eBay auction by URL is that in a few weeks the topic of discussion has disappeared. It works for immediate reference but not for future reference.
Here's a posting from the past about using shorter URL's.
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=1109.0
Dennis,
I use Firefox V2.0.0.16 as my browser, and I have this problem of viewing Forum pages which contain long URLs. I have looked at all the browser options I can locate, and still have not found a way to prevent this from happening. Any suggestions, short of changing my browser?
Dave
I just ran a quick test in Windows and on the Mac. ALL browsers I checked, except Microsoft Internet Explorer (which I don't necessarily recommend) exhibit this problem on this forum (cutting off the page to the right when there is long, unbreakable text in the page). No setting I could find in Firefox, Chrome or Safari mitigates the problem.
The problem has to do with the way this forum and its CSS formats the page. I don't think there's any solution other than the system policy, which encourages users not to post long urls.
EDIT: Correction: Firefox on the Mac does not exhibit the problem, although Firefox on Windows does.
Thanks, Dave. I guess that's that.
Dave F
Aahh, it's coming back to me now. Not that long ago there was a thread on here that pushed the width of the postings so wide that the responce buttons had disappeared off of the right side of the screen. And since there was no slide bar there was no way to slide to the right to get access to them. That must be what you are speaking of! Mystery solved!
Oh an thanks to the mathmaticians on the forum for weighing in on the tinyURL situation!
And now we rturn you to the regulary scheduled Crazy Subset Prices discussion!
Terry
Quote from: ae_collector on November 12, 2010, 01:20:17 PM
Aahh, it's coming back to me now. Not that long ago there was a thread on here that pushed the width of the postings so wide that the responce buttons had disappeared off of the right side of the screen. And since there was no slide bar there was no way to slide to the right to get access to them. That must be what you are speaking of! Mystery solved!
Oh an thanks to the mathmaticians on the forum for weighing in on the tinyURL situation!
And now we rturn you to the regulary scheduled Crazy Subset Prices discussion!
Terry
Yes Terry, that's the problem. I found that if I temporarily reduce the "text size" (one of my browser options), I can squeeze the page down so that the response buttons (sometimes) become visible. Of course, this also makes the text so tiny that it is difficult or impossible to read. So, it is then necessary to resize the text after clicking on the response button. Quite a hassle. Whoever supplied this Forum software ought to be contacted. Maybe there is some recent fix we aren't yet aware of.
eBay seems to have several different ways of generating a URL for a listing page, depending on how you access it. If you come into it from a search, it will have a long string of text in the url containing the title of the listing plus a lot of other codes. Anytime I ever post an address for an eBay listing, I always use the basic format http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=000000000000 (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=000000000000) where 000000000000 is the item number. That should be short enough not to cause anyone problems with their browser.
That's exactly how I was able to modify the post the last time this occurred, Dave. I just "Control (-)" minus sign, and reduced the size of the page until I could get access to the modify button. Then returned my browser to my normal viewing size. I also use Firefox.
I update the Forum software from time to time (when they tell me our version is out of date). I'll check it and see if it's time to do it again.
Yes, everything after the ebaY item number is not required so when doing a cut & paste on an ebaY URL, snip everything after the item number and the URL will be short enough to not cause any problems.
Terry
I have good news about the running off the right side of the page thing!
On a hunch (because FF in Windows did it and my FF in the Mac didn't) I have just now upgraded my windows FF from 2.0.0.14 to the latest version of 3.6.12.
The problem does not occur on this forum with this latest version of Firefox!
So, anybody who's hacked off by this nasty behavior, just upgrade to the latest version of Firefox.
Correction, I'm using Firefox 3.6.12 which is what you have Dave, so it must be the latest.
I'm cornfuseled, Dennis. Are you saying you're seeing the bad behavior with Firefox 3.6.12? Because I'm definitely not. Whereas I was seeing it with an earlier version.
I'm not really sure which version I had when I last experienced the problem. It was a couple of weeks ago. I may have updated since then since I get automatic updates for Firefox. We'll just have to wait and see if it happens again.
This is the url I used for testing. This page causes the unwanted behavior in the trouble browsers.
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=3763.0
That one works fine on this end.
For me, that last one works fine in firefox, but not in safari (on a mac).
Quote from: Dennis Markham on November 12, 2010, 08:02:55 AM
Frank, he used "Tinyurl" to create the link. It shortens those lengthy url's.
http://tinyurl.com/
Thanks Dennis, I tried "Tinyurl" it works great. I used to copy the item number and send it to the recipient, but then they had to first go to ebay etc. Thanks for the tip. Frank.
[Edit: a post with a long url was deleted above. it was breaking the page.]
Quote from: ae_collector on November 13, 2010, 11:00:38 AM
looks like all is well
'Ceptin you just messed up this thread for people who don't use IE or the latest Firefox.
>:( ;D
Quote from: masstel on November 13, 2010, 11:25:18 AM
Quote from: ae_collector on November 13, 2010, 11:00:38 AM
looks like all is well
'Ceptin you just messed up this thread for people who don't use IE or the latest Firefox.
>:( ;D
Did my post screw it up again???!! Or are you just messing with me?
Are yhou sure it was okay for other than IE & FF until now? I thought if anything would have trouble it would be Internet Explorer? Let me know, I'll delete my previous post.
Terry
Yes, I'm not sure exactly where the confusion is. This thread previously had no long, unbreakable text, and so was OK in all the browsers. After you added the long url, this thread now exhibits the "page goes off to the right margin" problem in Safari on the Mac, and probably other browsers as well.
At some point in the past there was a problem (before I posted) as this thread was identified as one causing this problem. So i'm not sure what's going on either.
EDIT:
Oh crap, just realized that I wasn't posting the link into the original "trouble thread" but into this one. Just deleted it...can you check if all is okay with this thread and the other programs?
For anyone unable to follow what is going on, I just deleted a post that I made between the current post #23 & 24 where I copied the long link from the other thread mentioned into this thread to see if it caused the W-I-D-E problem here too. And it did with certain programs so I have deleted it again.
Terry
This problem is complicated by the fact that different browsers wrap text differently.
This problem does not occur on the latest version of Firefox because it breaks the long URL into two (or three) lines successfully making none of those lines longer than the page width. Safari, for example, TRIES to break the line, but fails to do so in a way that leaves text that is shorter than the page width.
Every browser has different rules, apparently, for how it tries to break up this long text, and every long URL is different and so will break differently depending on these differing rules. So, a URL that messes up the page for Safari will probably also mess it up for the older Firefox, but maybe not.
Only MSIE and the newest Firefox seem to consistently be able to break the text without exceeding the page width limit.
This is all not to mention the fact that different users will see the problem to different degrees, depending on their current screen width.
The moral of the story, boys and girls, is just say no to long urls in posts on this forum! :)
That's why if everyone would just re-size the long URL's before publishing, life will be good.
Not to be out-done, it looks like Google has gotten into the act. Now they also have a shortener.
Here is a random e-bay long URL that has been shortened by google:
http://goo.gl/4PaqY
To shorten a URL, copy it and then go to http://goo.gl/ and paste it in. When it returns the shortened URL, copy it and paste it into whatever you are trying to do. It works just like tinyurl.com, except that if you have a Google ID, you can log in and keep a record of the shortened URL's you have created, and it shows the number of hits that shortened URL has gotten.
That darn Google, always going one step further! Thanks Bil.