A Comment On eBay's New Auction Layout

Over the last few months, eBay has been playing around with their auction pages, something that has made a lot of people angry. The exception to this was, up until about a week ago, you had the choice of using the old style page or the new one. As far as I can tell, from this point forward, we are not going to have that choice, which is both very good and bad at the same time.

First the good.

One of the biggest eBay auction page gripes of the last five years has been the timer, or really, lack there of. Although the clock counted down, it didnt do it in real time. This meant either having to set a snipe to win something in the last moments, or being very clever with page reloads and multiple windows. Considering that Java technology was more than equipped to handle a real time countdown with 1 click bidding, many eBayers were consistently shafted with inferior tech. Now, thank the lord, that has all changed, as one click bidding WITH a real time counter is now available. I cant tell you how happy this makes me, especially with my paranoia over giving my eBay info to a sniper service.

Secondly, the picture options have changed a lot, mostly when it comes to size and location. Instead of having to scroll through miles of text to find the "official" pic, its now handy, right up in the corner, larger than it normally was before. I like that. There are bad parts, too, but Ill get to that in a second.

Lastly, when it comes to loading everything on a big auction, it seems like it does everything a lot faster. I cant tell you how helpful that is, as before it took a long fucking time to load an auction with a ton of shit in it. Now, that seems to be a thing of the past thanks to the new "leaner" layout.

Yet, with every good thing, there are also bad things, though fortunately most of the bad things are minor.

The main gripe I have of the new auction page is the lack of being able to see all the pics without clicking on the new picture box. I have missed things here and there because of my misunderstanding, as not all pictures are readily available for viewing. That can be very, very problematic.

Also, even though the page does load faster, it looks very odd. Seems like it was designed to avoid large loading times instead of being practical enough with the layout to have a small load rate regardless. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but again, its minor.

Overall, my dissatisfaction will be crushed by the new real time status stuff, so im not too concerned. How about you?