A group of students have trumped eBay and Mozilla in the race to release a toolbar for the FireFox browser. Whilst the Firefox companion for eBay is still in Beta with bugs being reported and worked on, the students have released the MyEBayFox eBay Toolbar.
Not only have they released it ahead of the official toolbar but it has a couple of intersting twists to make it even more user friendly. It includes Adblock Plus to strip annoying banner adverts from sites you view and also shows eBay gallery pictures for all listings that you search, even if the gallery option wasn’t paid for by the seller. This is great for buyers – typically selecting gallery increases the selling price of a listing by some 12-15%, seeing a picture of items without gallery enables you to make a quicker buying decision on a cheaper product! No more clicking in the listing just to see the picture. 🙂
Currently the Firefox companion for eBay is only available for the UK, French and German eBay sites. MyEBayFox has been released for eBay.com but requests for other eBay sites have been made.
It will be interesting to see which toolbar has the greatest take up, the features of MyEBayFox are pretty convincing.
MyEBayFox was created by a student project at Stanford’s d.school. Pictured from the left the students who worked on the MyEBayFox Toolbar are Tyler Hicks-Wright, Peter Gleason, Madalina Seghete, and Ana Paula Azuela Garcia.
13 Responses
Cute graphic, but their browser still stinks :-p
Pah – Firefox kicks ass!
(IMHO :-p)
erm…
*looks at floor*
I sort of… well… slightly prefer IE7, even if it was designed by THAT company :-p FF definately better than previous IE versions, though.
I prefer IE6 to FF. FF is clunky and horrible and downloads images in a stupid way, and also publishes plugins by Vladuz.
I am not sure what you mean by clunky and stupid image downloading 😉 FF is the superior browser in my opinion.
@Biggles: IE gets the image size first, and puts a place holder in the page. FF gets the whole image at once, so that the page re-renders as the image downloads. If you’re trying to read text on a page while large images are downloading, the text moves about. It’s a pain in the arse and I don’t like it.
No Sue, that is the HTML code itself.. the web author has not specified the image dimensions. It happens in IE or FF.
img src=” ” width=xxx height=xxx
When the browser parses the code it doesnt know how big the image is ( and therefore how much space to allocate) until it fetches it from the server.
I agree is looks nasty when there are a bunch of images jumping around.. that is why its important to always specify the h x w , or use a code validator.
No, Biggles, that is not correct. I do not specify image dimensions in my code, and I have the jumping around in FF and the not jumping around in IE. If your explanation was correct, images would always jump, or always not jump, wouldn’t they – I would not have the scenario of jumping in FF and not jumping in IE.
If you don’t trust *me*, then I have the same scenario on eBay pages: jumping on FF, not jumping on IE.
As far as I can see, IE looks first at the image dimensions and allows the space, then downloads the “content” of the image. FF does not do this, it just gets the file. Hence the jumping: it’s down to how the browser reads the image file.
Are you using IE7?
I am using FF2 and IE6 ( only to check code and to load IE “only” pages).
I guarantee 100% that specifiying the image dimensions is the cause of page jumping. I have just tested it again.. try it.. remember to clear your cache each time and use a fairly large image.
If the html code specifies them then there will be no page jumping, you will just see a border outline *with the alt=’text’ * it will be replaced with the image when it loads. ( its also why I like to use progressive scan jpgs). All this was a real issue back in the 90’s with everyone on dialup. Images took ages to load – even those saved for the web. Now with broadband it is less of an issue, and you may not notice jumping around with dimensions not specified because the image has loaded fast! (multiple http requests perphaps)
I know what I am talking about. Trust me 😉
I am using IE6. Biggles, I’m sorry to argue, but I can SEE what it’s doing on the page. I’ve done extensive experimentation on this since the very day that FF was released, and I know what is happening. And I too know what I am talking about. I’ve been making web sites since 1995… believe me, I know what I’m doing.
As for “clear your cache”, well, IE and FF don’t share a cache, do they?! so that can’t possibly be a cause.
And yes, I have tried it, again. Yesterday, before I posted on this very thread.
I didnt say they shared a cache, just clear the cache before you do it.
The lack of image dimensions is the cause of page jumping in FF *and* IE. That is a fact.
However, I notice in IE simply deleting all offline content doesnt clear everything and subsequent reloading doesnt casue the page to jump ( even though it SHOULD BE) It still remembers the page. Until I find out why, I suggest you try it again with a fresh image, but you would know this if you were writing pages back in 1995? 😉 I put my first page online in 1993 at uni for a project, complete with the ubiquitous ‘under contruction’ logo ( dont do that now, google hates it)
The fact that FF does clear the cache and renders the page as it is written is rather telling 😉
I had another look at this tonight and I am pretty sure its down to IE’s dubious cache system, multiple hidden locations etc. Clearing the cache in the browser (IE) doesnt really clear it off. The likely suspects are the ‘secret cache files’ – index.dat in the History.IE5 and in the temp internet folders, as well as some cache folders. I tried a restore point and that doesnt roll the cache back, so I suspect its a safe mode job to remove the files and their various copies distributed throughout the OS. If anyone wants to experiment with this further than I suggest you start there.
Anyhow….this integration into the OS (and some other minor things) is what annoys me, and no doubt others. FF is a pretty good open source browser and highly recommend anyone using IE6 to switch over to it, if only for the popup blocker. .. not to mention the tabbed browsing ïŠ
p.s. I am sweeter than honey 😉
I regretfully have to admit that although I use FF as my main browser there are still tasks I’m forced to perform in IE as they don’t work in FF
Nuff said! :-p