# Hey.  eBay.  Your new HTML "helper" sucks ass.  (Lame)

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-ebay-your-new-html-helper-sucks-ass-lame/379192
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [November 5, 2006, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-ebay-your-new-html-helper-sucks-ass-lame/379192 "2006-11-05T17:37:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2006, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hey-ebay-your-new-html-helper-sucks-ass-lame/379192/1 "2006-11-05T17:37:27Z")

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Seriously, what the hell were they thinking?

So here’s how I work when I do up my auctions. I open up Macromedia Dreamweaver where I have my auction template set up all nice 'n purdy. I have DW set up to display a split code view/design view so that if I want to make any changes to the raw code by hand I needn’t open a new window or change views. My code view display does what any self-respecting programming IDE does: It indents HTML code with each new open tag and outdents when those tags are closed. It is also set to word-wrap long text lines at 80 characters. (This is a setting I probably should have change to be longer but it never bothered me enough to take the initiative) Until recently, posting eBay auctions this way has worked flawlessly; my auctions would be formatted just fine, thank you very much.

Now eBay went and fucked it all up.

Now, when I post my code in the HTML tab of the eBay listing window, _it retains the indented spacing of all text!_ What the hell? HTML is designed to _ignore_ more than one space between \<br\> and \<p\> tags. But _noooo_. What does eBay do? It sticks a freakin’ million &nbsp; tags where they have no business being! The result? All of my paragraphs have a metric assload of unnecessary and excessive spaces all over the damn place! This paragraph, for example, would look something like this:

```auto

Now, when I post my code in the HTML tab of the eBay listing window, *it retains the indented spacing of all text!* What the hell? HTML is designed to *ignore* more than one space between <br> and <p> tags. But *noooo*. What does eBay do? It sticks a freakin' million   tags where they have no business being! The result? All of my paragraphs have a metric assload of unnecessary and excessive spaces all over the damn place! This paragraph, for example, would look something like this:

```

Hey! eBay! You’re not microsoft! Stop fucking with my HTML!

Now I had to go and change my entire fucking template to change the code view to remove all word wrap and outdent all text lines to column 0 so it doesn’t look like complete ass. Except now my code view looks like complete ass.

Fuck.