eBay Hacks

Construct an Interactive Photo Album

Use JavaScript to save money and get a better photo album to boot.

eBay provides a "photo album” feature, which allows your bidders to view multiple photos right in the auction by clicking thumbnails. However, this feature is available only if you’re using eBay’s Picture Services to host your photos, which means you’re paying extra for rather limited photos.

If you’re hosting your auction photos, as described in [Hack #59], all you need is a little JavaScript to accomplish the same thing. See [Hack #60] for another approach, as well as some background information on preparing the thumbnail images used in this hack.

The Hack

Simply place this code in your auction description:

<table cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 border=1>
<tr><td>
   <img src="view1.jpg" border=0 name="view">     [1]
</td></tr>
<tr><td align=center>
  <img src="view1s.jpg" border=1     [2]
              onClick="document.images['view'].src='view1.jpg';">
  <img src="view2s.jpg" border=1     [3]
              onClick="document.images['view'].src='view2.jpg';">
</td></tr>
</table>

This creates a simple, two-cell table, shown in Figure 5-10. The upper cell contains the first of several images, and the lower cell contains the thumbnails for all images.

Figure 5-10. This simple photo album gives photos hosted off eBay a classy presentation

Lines [2] and [3] specify the two thumbnails, but they’re not linked to their larger counterparts ...