In my on-going effort to tweak things until they break, I've enhanced the Auction Hunter bot to now post realtime eBay auction widgets.  The major advantage of this is that the auction status is now updated as you view the post, rather than being static at the time of posting.  If that makes any sense.

Unfortunately, the look and contents of these widgets are not customizable -- otherwise, I would have removed a couple of superfluous things, like the "search" button.  However, I think these are minor annoyances in tradeoff for a pretty useful functionality.

Depending on what everyone thinks, I'll either keep it as-is or remove it altogether.  I can also expand this to include the Auction Image Preview function in the main forums -- you know, when you post an eBay link, it displays the auction image... I can have it display the widget instead.

Foul

That's correct, it updates every time you view the thread.  Or you can hit the little curved arrow "refresh" button on the widget itself.  Hovering over various pieces of the widget also do some neat things.

Foul

I am all in.

I noticed this too.  Are you running ForumRunner or some other app, or just viewing the site natively?

Foul

The widget uses Flash which is why it does not work on the iphone.

I like it though!

chrisdeputron wrote:The widget uses Flash which is why it does not work on the iphone.

I like it though!

Damn it. I almost always check the site during the day on my iphone or ipad.  :cry:

Can you see the item name ("Blackmoor") above the white box?

Foul

Well, don't keep too close an eye on it; it won't change.  I disabled the Flash widget for a moment while I work on something... I may have a solution.

Foul

Alrighty, give 'er a spin with the iPhone.  Should be fixed now.

Unfortunately, the solution was to detect that you're on an iPhone, and revert the listing to the old style.  So it will look just like it did before (the auctions won't auto-update; they'll be static from the time of posting, which will usually be right when the auction begins).  This works for iPads, iPods, and iPhones; if someone is using another mobile device that also has problems, please let me know and I'll add it to the exception list.

More good news:  for those of you who hate the new widgets, I'm going to implement a Control Panel switch so you can revert them to the old style.  That way I think everybody will be happy.  I'm too tired to implement it tonight, so it'll be tomorrow or Monday.

Foul