eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Override eBay’s Fonts and Styles

Use Cascading Style Sheets to change the look of more than just the description.

The <font> tag [Hack #52] , allows you to set the font for any block of text. But it won’t have any effect on text outside the <font></font> structure, which means you can never use it to control the appearance of any text outside the description area (e.g., the rest of the auction page). Instead, you’ll have to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) if you want to apply your styles to the entire page.

Tip

CSS purists may balk at the presence of the following <style></style> structure inside the body of an HTML page. If you had control over the entire page, the technique used in this hack would not be entirely proper, but since you only have control over a portion of the body, you’ll have to break from good practice to hack the listing page.

The following code, for instance, will turn all text on the page green:

               <style>
   BODY, FONT, TD, A {
       font-size: 10pt !important;
     font-family: Verdana, Arial, helvetica !important;
          color: green !important;
    }
    </style>

Here’s how it works. First, the <style></style> structure sets apart your CSS definitions, which will take effect regardless of where ...