Firefox displays certain eBay auction pages with too much white space, why?
I have noticed that Firefox 3.6.8 is rendering ebay auction pages with a large block of white space between the section with the 'Description' and 'Payment and Postage' tabs and the section above it. Also, there is a strange difference where the PayPal logo is displayed in that upper section. FF renders it with an eBay logo just beneath it but the eBay logo is sliced in half.
Internet Explorer renders the site correctly without white space and without the sliced-in-half eBay logo (which doesn't appear at all!). I am not sure that all ebay auction pages are affected in this way. My own auction pages certainly are and I write my own HTML listings and insert them in the HTML section when posting auctions. The screen shots are not one of my auctions so the problem is common to others.
Here is a screen shot of the problem area, rendered in Firefox http://members.iinet.com.au/~jegger/e.../firefox_ebay_rendition_.gif
and this is the same area rendered in IE8
http://members.iinet.com.au/~jegger/e.../internet_explorer_ebay_.gif
I hope these links work.
Having just spotted the Snipe It Firefox Add-on logo/button is on the Firefox window but not the IE I wondered if that was the cause of the odd rendering but disabling it and restarting FF made no difference.
By the way, I only have an old 17inch screen although I see no reason why screen size should affect this issue. I haven't inspected other aspects of eBay page rendition but this anomaly is glaringly obvious. Any help would be appreciated.
Modified by Banjine
All Replies (9)
Reset the page zoom on pages that cause problems: View > Zoom > Reset (Ctrl+0 (zero); Cmd+0 on Mac)
See Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages and Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Zoom_text_of_web_pages
Thanks, but I checked the zoom before posting. Zooming out merely shrinks the whole page but the white space remains.
I would appreciate it if others could confirm this anomaly by viewing a few eBay auctions. This one demonstrates the same problem as do many others:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/deco-Danish-Da.../180557578871?pt=AU_Art_Nouveau&hash=item2a0a120277
Remember that it is not just the superfluous white space but also the half-logo which is in error.
Here are the screen shots (why is the image uploader not visible on my initial post?)
I see in your screenshots you are running Adblock Plus. Did you try disabling Adblock Plus to see if the eBay page renders correctly?
If so, you can uncheck the rule for "||ebay.com/ws/ebayisapi.dll?$third-party" and it should render correctly.
I also have this problem as seen here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10591127/firefox1.png
Look at the scroll bar on the right. I have restarted firefox with all addons disabled and this did not help.
I'm running win7 with FF5. I have also posted here: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/853093
Thanks, Matt
Modified by mld89
I am not using AdBlock and find that ALL ebay pages have this problem in Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3
Let me amend this to say that the main pages are fine but when an individual item is view there is a huge whitespace at the bottom.
Modified by injuhneer
If you have increased the minimum font size then try the default setting "none" as a high value can cause issues like you described.
- Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Advanced > Minimum Font Size (none)
- Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Advanced > [X] "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"
- Press F10 or tap the Alt key to bring up the "Menu Bar" temporarily if the Menu Bar is hidden.
- Use "Firefox > Options" instead of "Tools > Options" if the menu bar is hidden.
If you are not on Windows then see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Menu_differences
- Windows: Firefox (Tools) > Options
- Mac: Firefox > Preferences
- Linux: Edit > Preferences
My guess is eBay or Firefox is defaulting some of the html for the item description. If you look at the source for an offending page, you'll notice iframe "b" has a height of 10000. The page is rendering with a large amount of space, maybe to make sure large item descriptions don't get cut off? I tried with Chrome and there's no problem; the spacing is correct.
div class="item_description"
div id="ngvi_desc_div"
div class="d-iframe"
iframe id="b" width="99%" height="10000" frameborder="0" src="http://vi.ebaydesc.com...