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About Rob: I'm a programming hobbyist with some practical work experience creating interactive lookup and data submitting tools for web sites. A few years ago I learned about eBay from friends lamenting the difficulties they were having including pictures with their auction descriptions. At the time there wasn’t much help available from eBay or elsewhere so I decided to take a stab at creating an online program that helped include pictures in auction descriptions along with some simple HTML formatting for the text. Besides helping them I felt I was ready to give back something to the Internet community in general for all the help I myself have been given through the years.
Thus, my first public effort at programming was born as "The Form". The Form was a free to use "fill in the blanks" online program that made it easy to include pictures and HTML in auction descriptions without needing to know any HTML. Slowly I added features to the program based on suggestions from users and as I learned new programming techniques. That effort resulted in a new separate version, "The Form With Color and Save". In its heyday over a thousand open auctions were up on eBay at any given time created using that program. Still not satisfied, I kept working and launched FreeForm in early 2000. FreeForm is what I would describe as the next step for eBay sellers who want the freedom to design their auction descriptions on the fly, unshackled by normal templates, yet also need and desire built in conveniences that facilitate the auction design process. Although it wasn't always so, there are now many services available to help create auction descriptions that include HTML. Nearly all of them, however, rely on choosing among fixed templates (my older programs pretty much worked the same way). By nature, fixed templates limit freedom of expression and sooner or later it is likely that a desired element will be missing from the available templates or a different sequence of elements within the description will be desired but unachievable. FreeForm enables the user to mix and match elements within their descriptions in any sequence and any quantity. To my knowledge there is nothing like it available online or offline as a tool for creating auction descriptions. Why, you may ask, have I gone to all this trouble? Well, when you get not a few emails like the following it is very motivating! |
| I love your site. Thank you so much. If it weren't for wonderful people like you... those of us like me would be totally clueless on how to create stunning auctions that actually sell our items. |
| Short of investing the time necessary to master HTML or learn how to properly utilize an HTML editor there is no more flexible method for creating custom auction descriptions. Using FreeForm is certainly more practical than using an HTML editor or freehand HTML because it provides a more convenient and foolproof interface for swapping out pictures and textual content. FreeForm by default also produces error free HTML and "come as you are" visitor friendly layouts. I think we’ve all experienced web page or auction description layouts that were unfriendly to us. Either they were designed for use with a particular browser window size or display resolution in mind that we either can’t have, can’t use, or simply don’t prefer resulting in annoyances ranging from not being able to see some content at all to needing to scroll right and left throughout the presentation to see/read all of the content. Anything that has the potential to annoy that can be avoided obviously should be avoided in auction descriptions. FreeForm minimizes annoyances to your visitors by inherently flowing content into view within the visitor’s browser window. Go ahead and adjust the size of your browser's viewing window now and see how the content flows to remain in view. |
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Just because you can... ... doesn't mean you should. If I had choose the most important lesson learned in programming for websites, that would be it. You have or will be exposed to some fairly impressive functionality within eBay descriptions such as click to enlarge and slideshows within the body of descriptions. While impressive and often seemingly helpful to potential bidders the DHTML, JavaScript, and HTML required to produce these functionalities may not be compatible with all of the Internet browsers your auction visitors are using. In the HTML medium of eBay auctions it's probably not worth the trouble of bumping your head (and certainly not any visitor's heads) even a little to obtain advanced functionalities.
All that said, for those who know what they are doing (or don’t but just want to have fun), FreeForm does provide “Code” sections for inclusion of any HTML, JavaScript, and/or DHTML desired to take advantage of all the advanced functionality available in the latest browser versions. The best of both worlds! Good Luck with your auctions! Rob Bell |
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