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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week - September 27, 2005 |
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Book
review – Easy HTML for Ebay QUE books by Nicholas Chase. We’ve
all heard of EBAY – the online store accessible by anyone to sell
anything to anyone. Truly a global online auction house, it has become a pop phenomenon.
As the
story goes, Ebay was started in 1995 by an entrepreneur to allow his
fiancé to trade PEZ dispensers online. Those are those little candy
dispensers that come in different shapes, made famous in the movie
“Stand by me”. I
actually like to go to antique stores and flea markets sometimes. I notice
that some of them are orderly and well run, and some are pretty bad.
Psychologically I think I want to buy from a place that looks nice and
businesslike and organized. Easy HTML
for Ebay is an illustrated full color book designed for Ebay sellers who want
their ads, or store, to look orderly and businesslike, and the book’s
screen shots and pictures show you exactly how to do everything. . As I
cruise the ads on Ebay, many of them do look like “electronic ransom
notes”, letters and type fonts that don’t match, blurry pictures,
dull looking ads, and a lot of unprofessionalism. The book
starts off with the basics of Ebay, how to register as a seller and creating an auction, and then gets
into how to use HTML hyper text markup language, to make your ads look
appealing to the buyer’s eye. Now
before you start freaking out thinking that you’ll need a complicated
and expensive Web Page creation tool like Microsoft Frontpage – the
book instead has you use the simplest text editing programs that come free
with all recent versions of Windows – either Notepad or Wordpad. The HTML
language is actually simple to learn and to use. It works almost exactly like
the very first word processors in the pc world of maybe 25 years ago. By
using either Notepad or Wordpad, you’ll really learn and
understand the logic of HTML. Chapter 3
gets into adding pictures to your Ebay page, starting with hints on how to
take pictures, lighting, positioning, etc., to sizing the pictures to fit
your page, and how to display the pictures attractively in your ad. Subsequent
chapters cover Arranging the pages of your ads, how to insert tables,
positioning objects, How to decorate your page so it is eye-pleasing, how to
pick the proper text fonts and colors for your page, and creating lists. Then the
book teaches you how to create hyperlinks, or links in your ad, such as
enabling people to email you, or linking to other pages or websites. There’s
a chapter on adding sound, video and animation to your pages to really spiff
things up, including flash images. Chapter 9
deals with how to create a page about you, to inform buyers who you are, and
what personal information you wish to share. And the
final chapter covers how to make your listings really stand out among the
thousands of others, using java scripts and fancy mouseover techniques. Virtually
anyone can sell on Ebay, but there is an art to having good looking ads that
work, and Easy HTML for Ebay can help novices become seasoned pros. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa
99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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