"Global Features" at the top of the Auction Builder form provides for defining the overall presentation of your eBay auction description. Other sections of the form define elements that may be included and will display in your finished description in the sequence that they appear. By default, one of each type of element is included. You may add or remove elements as you desire or simply pick out the ones you want and leave the others blank.

Learning how to use FreeForm is easy and can be accomplished by simply filling things in and hitting any of the "Preview" buttons scattered about to see what happens. Moving back and forth between "Preview" and the form has been made as convenient as possible so experiment as much as you like. When you click on the Help button within a particular form element, the instructions for that element will be displayed in this screen along with whatever additional help is appropriate for that element.

There are lots of choices both here and in each of the elements that you choose to include in your auction yet one of the good things about FreeForm is that your auction will appear fine if you simply leave all the options at their defaults. Experimenting with different combinations of settings is purely optional!

Global Features


The presence of the "Do NOT use any images from this description for The Gallery" allows you to deselect a picture you may have chosen for use with eBay's Gallery.  (The ability to choose a picture for that purpose is explained within the instructions for a picture element).


Define the default text color for any title, text blocks, or terms & conditions elements that you choose to include in your auction description. Colors are chosen from a chart that comes up when you click on the color swatches. In individual elements you may override the choice made here. Advanced users may alternatively fill in HTML codes for colors that do not appear in the chart. Color swatches will appear with the letter "C" (for custom) when HTML codes are not found in the chart.


Choose the font face (type style) for all the text of your description. Text size and bold are optionally set in the individual elements.


Define the default background color for all elements that you choose to include in your auction description. Colors are chosen from a chart that comes up when you click on the color swatches. In individual elements you may override the choice made here. Advanced users may alternatively fill in HTML codes for colors that do not appear in the chart. Color swatches will appear with the letter "C" (for custom) when HTML codes are not found in the chart.
Tip: It is possible that some visitors to your auctions may use older web page viewers (browsers) that do not honor background wallpaper or background colors. For that reason it is always best to choose text colors that are at least reasonably legible against a white background which is what those visitors to your auction will see.


Optionally choose a background wallpaper picture from the "library", from your AOL user FTPSpace (if applicable), or type in the URL (internet address) to any other picture stored on the Internet.  Pictures, to be displayed on web pages and in eBay auctions, must be stored somewhere on the Internet. This requires an Internet host for your pictures to which you "upload" pictures from your own computer. AOL offers a service to its members of 2 megabytes of storage space per AOL username (keyword MyFTPSpace). The "library" consists of Public Domain background pictures permanently stored in the AOL FTPSpace of AOL user RobBellJr and you are welcome to use them whenever and however you like.


When you have chosen a color background or wallpaper background image it is sometimes desirable to adjust the color of link and vlink text to make links more visible. The colors shown here will apply to email links, my other auctions links, and website links. (Visited link color is the color that links change to if they have already been visited by the viewer)
IMPORTANT: Colors chosen here will effect the ENTIRE EBAY AUCTION PAGE (not just your description portion). For that reason it is imperative that you choose colors that will be reasonably visible against a white background!


One of the things that really slows down the loading of eBay's "Sell Your Item" page is all of the category listings that are embedded into it. Instead, choose a category here to greatly speed the loading of that page when you use FreeForm to "Go directly to eBay with this description" (from FreeForm's Preview screen). A category chosen here will also be saved with your description when you choose to "Save this description for future use" (from FreeForm's Preview screen). If you always post to the same categories then when you retrieve previously saved descriptions the category will already be filled in for you.
Do not attempt to type in an eBay category number and title yourself. FreeForm needs additional information about the category that is captured during the selection process. If you change your mind about choosing a category here you may, however, blank out the fields.

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