New user upgrading to GS7, lots of basic problems & queries

[pvision]

I’m a long-term user of GS6 and am considering moving to GS7.My requirements are for simple, responsive templates that work well on iPhones & other phones

I started by editing the Pro:Header template in GS to get something useable. Then I moved over to Design Utility to create a template.

Specific queries

1 - I have a text string in Subtitle with an IMG tag to show a logo. This works sometimes, not other times . There seems to be no logic to when it works. I can see the logo in DU preview but not in GS and not with a live auction

2 - When I edit the HTML for a custom template there seems to be no way to make GS update the preview apart from quitting & relaunching

3 - there is no consistency in use of DU and template editing. The same was true in GS 6. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they stop working and it’s not obvious where the problem lies

4 - No help files for DU

5 - Three live auctions is not enough to test the new version

6 - Some design aspects are still hidden when editing templates. The output of the Subtitle string is from GS and apparently can’t be edited

Moving on from there, I have hacked together a template and started deploying it. I have . series of problems

7 - setting a default font size & style in the template doesn’t necessarily translate into reality. If I import an old listing, change the template to my new one and delete the old HTML I see see the Lorem Ipsum template. If I paste without style into this I don’t necessarily get my template font preferences. Sometimes, not always

8 - editing images is a pain. It’s better than V6 but that’s not saying much. If I delete all images - so I can use https images to keep eBay happy - the first image is added with “Add Image URL”. This brings up a dialog box prefilled with “http://www.myserver.com/image.jpg” - a totally useless prefill. It’s a URL no-one will ever use so why provide it?

There appears to be no way to edit this prefilled data. GS isn’t canny enough to pick up the URL from your preferences so EVERY TIME you add an image you have to select & delete this prefilled, useless data

9 - Pasting image URLs sometimes pastes as HTML, sometimes as a URL. I haven’t figured out why. Paste without style solves this - another task to remember

10 - Trying to re-order images results in copies being made in the main window

11 - no way to change the order of images with drag & drop in either window

12 - Copying images via drag & drop changes the size of the copied images

13 - Edit URL doesn’t work on copied images

14 - Pasting text without style into the template results in unpredictable font sizes

15 - copying & pasting text with links from one auction to another loses URL links

16 - as in V6, creating links loses the font style

17 - as V6, creating links for words in the middle of a sentence adds an extra space in front of the word. V6 used to add one afterwards as well - maybe V8 will get it right?

18 - In the add URL dialog box, hitting return key instead of the OK button gives a carriage return. Apple UI states it should activate the highlighted option which is the OK button

19 - As in V6 bulleted lists just don’t work properly. A white bullet is inserted between each line. A stray bullet (plenty of those flying around in this software) is often appended on a trailing line

20 - if you want to select all text to sort out front problems (ie, for every listing) putting the cursor in front of the first character, clicking and dragging down to select the text will only scroll the page at a snail’s pace. Click after the last character, hold & drag up and it will scroll fast

I think V7 is a reasonable step forward from V6 but it’s riddled with bugs & inconsistencies. The chance to eradicate them in a new version has been missed. Too many of the old bugs are still there for it to be seen as a success

All-in-all, it’s the shonkiest piece of Macintosh software I’ve ever used

Some of my complaints will be incorrect, based on not understanding the new software or on misconceptions but V7 still stands as a disappointingly poor piece of work

Oh, just one more thing: The supplied templates are, with maybe two exceptions, complete and utter garbage. No-one but a 7-year-old would use them. And I don’t think 7-year-olds are the target market. Junk the whole lot and supply five or six simple, useful templates so we don’t have to wade through mediocity

[ilja]

@pvision

I have a text string in Subtitle with an IMG tag to show a logo. This works sometimes, not other times . There seems to be no logic to when it works. I can see the logo in DU preview but not in GS and not with a live auction

Don’t do this. HTML is not meant to go into the title or subtitle fields. I’m surprised eBay doesn’t reject an item with html code in the subtitle.

@pvision

2 - When I edit the HTML for a custom template there seems to be no way to make GS update the preview apart from quitting & relaunching

For performance reasons, GarageSale loads the HTML code of all design into memory when it starts. So, edits to design HTML don’t have an effect until your restart GS.

@pvision

3 - there is no consistency in use of DU and template editing. The same was true in GS 6. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they stop working and it’s not obvious where the problem lies

Can you be more specific?

@pvision

4 - No help files for DU

Have you seen this page:

https://manual.iwascoding.com/gs7/en/Miscellaneous-Creating_Own_Listing_Designs.html

@pvision

6 - Some design aspects are still hidden when editing templates. The output of the Subtitle string is from GS and apparently can’t be edited

Subtitles can’t contain HTML and therefore cannot be styled with a design template. Hence it’s not possible to modify that field from a design template

@pvision

7 - setting a default font size & style in the template doesn’t necessarily translate into reality. If I import an old listing, change the template to my new one and delete the old HTML I see see the Lorem Ipsum template. If I paste without style into this I don’t necessarily get my template font preferences. Sometimes, not always

We can look into this, but I’m not sure it’s technically possible to set the current HTML style attributes when editing to whatever is used elsewhere in the design. I you want fine grained control over your HTML, I suggest you use GarageSale’s editor mode to work with HTML directly.

@pvision

This brings up a dialog box prefilled with “http://www.myserver.com/image.jpg” - a totally useless prefill. It’s a URL no-one will ever use so why provide it?

Because a large number of our users don’t know what an URL is and how it looks. The default placeholder is just that, a placeholder to give novice users an idea what they are expected to enter here.

@pvision

There appears to be no way to edit this prefilled data. GS isn’t canny enough to pick up the URL from your preferences so EVERY TIME you add an image you have to select & delete this prefilled, useless data

We were assuming that most people copy and paste their URLs into this box, and not edit them manually in GarageSale.

@pvision

9 - Pasting image URLs sometimes pastes as HTML, sometimes as a URL. I haven’t figured out why. Paste without style solves this - another task to remember

The text field in the URL panel shouldn’t try to interpret the HTML. We turned that option off.

@pvision

10 - Trying to re-order images results in copies being made in the main window

11 - no way to change the order of images with drag & drop in either window

We tested and found that on macOS 10.12, there was no thumbnail shown when dragging images, but other than that we could successfully reorder images without copies being made.

@pvision

12 - Copying images via drag & drop changes the size of the copied images

Can you elaborate? Are you talking about import images into GarageSale from other applications?

@pvision

13 - Edit URL doesn’t work on copied images

What do you mean by copying? Editing URLs only works on images created with “Add URL Image” command.

Also, why are you using URL image add all? GarageSale really shines when you just add images as file and let it handle all the image uploading by itself.

@pvision

14 - Pasting text without style into the template results in unpredictable font sizes

Could it be the font size that you last used?

@pvision

15 - copying & pasting text with links from one auction to another loses URL links

You are only copying the text representation as it would be rendered by a browser. If you want to copy the underlying HTML code, please use Editor mode.

@pvision

16 - as in V6, creating links loses the font style

17 - as V6, creating links for words in the middle of a sentence adds an extra space in front of the word. V6 used to add one afterwards as well - maybe V8 will get it right?

19 - As in V6 bulleted lists just don’t work properly. A white bullet is inserted between each line. A stray bullet (plenty of those flying around in this software) is often appended on a trailing line

20 - if you want to select all text to sort out front problems (ie, for every listing) putting the cursor in front of the first character, clicking and dragging down to select the text will only scroll the page at a snail’s pace. Click after the last character, hold & drag up and it will scroll fast

There is not much we can do about these one, because we have to rely on the functionality that’s provided by macOS, more specifically the WebKit library. These issue are know, and we already invested heavily on fixing or working around them, but that’s the best we could come up with.

If you are working with lists and links a lot, I suggest you use the new Markdown mode we added in GarageSale 7 for editing and only use the Preview Mode for previewing your listing.

@pvision

18 - In the add URL dialog box, hitting return key instead of the OK button gives a carriage return. Apple UI states it should activate the highlighted option which is the OK button

Sorry, we could not reproduce this. The OK button immediately closes the Add URL panel for us.

@pvision

Oh, just one more thing: The supplied templates are, with maybe two exceptions, complete and utter garbage. No-one but a 7-year-old would use them. And I don’t think 7-year-olds are the target market. Junk the whole lot and supply five or six simple, useful templates so we don’t have to wade through mediocity

You can always hide the designs you don’t like from the Design manager window (window menu).