Hi Community,
Update - Our engineering team has been looking into the various reports regarding how the new version of our description editor renders formatting code and it appears that these differences are not being caused by problems with the new editor per se, but because the new editor (which is complaint with the latest HTML standards) renders code a bit differently than the version of the editor that we were using before. The following are some key notes about when we found that may help users who are being affected by this:
1) The primary reason the FCK Editor was updated to the most current version was mostly due to security concerns for both the business and our customers. There were some vulnerabilities in the previous version of the editor that posed potential security risks, so in order to be secure for both the business and our customers, the new version closed all of the known gaps in security as well as fixed a list of numerous complaints and issues.
It was not because the editor was broken or did not function entirely correct, but we cannot risk security for the sake of being convenient and it was decided that the risk was too great to not perform the upgrade. There were also some new features that we are planning on taking advantage of later down the road which were not available in the older version.
2) The changes in the behavior of the editor in terms of how content displays have changed as a result of upgrading to the newer version of the editor. The previous version of the editor was compliant for older versions of HTML, not newer versions that are supported by all of the newer browsers. Older versions of HTML browsers and editors were much more “forgiving” of bad HTML code and usually would just ignore it and display anything that was correct and recognized. With newer HTML standards and a new editor that enforces the newer standards as well as a browser with new standards (IE8), HTML code that previously did not display at all in the editor is now displaying based on the new HTML standards and confusing the users.
a. When the previous editor didn’t display bad HTML, it gave users the impression that there was nothing wrong with their HTML code. Coupled with this, when a listing is posted to eBay, there are rules and code on eBay’s end that would also ignore any bad HTML or improper tags and display everything else. This gave users the impression that they had written all of the HTML correctly when in fact, it was never correct and just being “forgiven” by the editor and eBay. eBay is still forgiving of poorly written code and will mask bad code or hide it to create a positive buyer experience and prevent people from putting malicious code on eBay.
b. Since the previous version of the editor was hiding bad code, and eBay wasn’t rendering the bad code either, this bad HTML code has been in the system for years in some cases and now that the editor no longer hides the bad code and doesn’t support very old HTML, users are getting the impression that we “broke” their listings or the editor or both. This is not the case and previewing the listing will display it with 95% accuracy to what would be viewed by a buyer browsing on eBay. The preview is difficult to achieve 100% accuracy because of the fact that eBay changes too frequently to be in lock-step with their changes, however we do take great care in making the preview as accurate as possible to what the listing would look like on eBay.
3) The biggest issue with the new editor so far seems to be with customers whose HTML includes “display:none” as a property in the code. Finding this and removing it will solve most issues. Another issue is with HTML tags that have been copied from other applications using proprietary tags, such as MS Word or DreamWeaver. Since there are literately hundreds of HTML editors and design tools that all generate different formats and tags, it is nearly impossible for us to find and clean-up every tag.
The reason this is mentioned here is because with HTML 1.0-3.0, there was a limited set of new tags introduced in each new release which made it less difficult to keep a list of tags that we could look for in code and strip out so that it wouldn’t cause a problem on eBay. With the time span between HTML 3.0 and HTML 4.0, there have been numerous new standards introduced that have changed the entire HTML cleaning process and now users can paste in a ton of new tags and code from other applications.
I will post again to this thread if we find any additional differences between the new version of the description and the old one that may be of interest. If you have any other questions regarding your Auctiva account, please feel free to contact our customer support team using the web form on the following page of our site: http://www.auctiva.com/help/requesthelp.aspx
-Mike