. These could be used for a wide variety of purposes and be a part of the product entry process in a way that is not confusing to users (ie: them thinking that these extra inputs are eBay inputs).Why? In our case for example we vend many things but we vend a good deal of software. As such we do not want our eBay Tagline appearing as a Title in ad's. An example listing tagline might me "Superbike Racing - NEW CD With Manual On CD. COOL RACING FUN!". However, in the actual listing (advertisement) we want a TITLE "EA SPORTS SUPERBIKE RACING"... We need worry about system requirement, "Windows 95/98/2000/XP*". We need worry about packaging, "CD In Plain Slimline Jewel Case Manual On CD!".
So as an example here we have three fields and all of these fields map to the TEMPLATE not actual eBay input fields. Thus the need for [EXTRA] tags, so templates can have content injected into them that is product specific as part of the listing creation process. In our example the item title, operating system, packaging are all different font sizes with varying font decoration, all done via CSS. so some [OPTIONAL] tags would be a very nice addition. We need it yesterday
I am a software engineer as well, VB, ASP etc. Just getting started with eBay. While Noob to some of this stuff I have heaps and gobs of eCommerce ideas and experience. It's too bad I'm in NY .vs. CA as I'd love to visit and chew over some thoughts or job prospects.