Friday, October 24, 2014

A Better eBay Filter Greasemonkey script update

 By user request, the A Better eBay Filter Greasemonkey script has been updated and uploaded to the Greasyfork site.

A Better eBay Filter is a script designed for users of eBay. It filters eBay searches to hide item entries from sellers who have a feedback score or positive percentage below values you specify, or above for feedback score, or filter out Top-rated sellers. The input values can be dynamically changed to filter items into or out of view. Last values are saved between browsing sessions. Use A Better eBay Filter to winnow the display of auctions to sellers that match your preferences. The script has been tested on USA's ebay.com, Canada's ebay.ca, and UK's ebay.co.uk sites. It may work with other country sites, depending on whether they match the internals of the tested eBay sites.
NOTE: For this script to work properly, choose List View (not Gallery View), and turn on the Seller details option in Customize View, so that the seller information is displayed in the listings. This is a version 7.0 update from previous userscripts.org versions, to address eBay changes which broke previous versions of the script.

A Better eBay Filter requires seller feedback information to be displayed on each item entry so it can filter the results. After installing A Better eBay Filter, go to a listing or search screen. Click the View link at the top of the listings and choose Customize. This will navigate you to the Customize your search page. On that page, you should see a selection titled Seller Information. Check the box so that seller information is displayed in listing views. Note the exact wording may change depending on the site's native language.

After installation and setup, A Better eBay Filter will display two status lines immediately below the basic Search line. The first status line shows the minimum feedback score and positive feedback percentage necessary to display an item entry. The initial values of 50 and 98.5 are forgiving, but easy to change. In addition, you may specify a maximum feedback score, or leave it blank if you do not wish a maximum: zero is not the same as blank. The default is blank (no maximum). In addition, there is a checkbox to filter out Top-rated Sellers. The second line displays an Update Filter button and the current number of items hidden from view by the filter.

You can change the score and percentage values to whatever you want. For example, if you do not want to hide new user auctions, you can change the feedback score to 1 (or 0) and see those auctions. Should you change a value, the filtered items message changes to a Values changed. message. This is an indication to press the Update Filter button to update the display with the new filter constraints. Each time you press Update Filter, the current values are stored for a future browser session or search/listing page display. You are not prohibited from choosing values which will hide all items, e.g. a Minimum positive feedback input of greater than 100 will filter out all entries, as will a minimum score higher than the maximum.

Pleae post if you have any questions about using the script.

18 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing such informative piece related to Ebay… this feature has made it quite simple for the users to shortlist the items, which they consider to be useful for them.

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  2. I have been using this script on Mozilla Firefox for a long time, but it has suddenly stopped working. I have tried to reinstall it and everything seems OK on the Add-ons Manager, but two status lines which used to be immediately below the basic Search line are no longer there, even tough I have my searches set on List View and and Seller Feedback Information is displayed. Any ideas? I always found this script so useful ...

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    1. Hmm, it still works for me to filter out based on feedback count or top seller. Maybe it's a problem specific to a country site, is this a non-US site? Can you give me an exact listing that would be an example of a problem of how the script isn't working? It doesn't have to be something you really want to filter, just an easy example so I can test the script with it.

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  3. Yeah, Ebay changes the internals on its website every so often. Usually it's not a big deal to get the script back working. I'll look at it tonight, probably have an update ready in a couple of days, or so.

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  4. Oddly enough, the script tends to be hit or miss as to when it works. I was searching for some stuff on eBay yesterday, and half the time the feedback filter appeared, half the time it didn't...very weird! I thought maybe the URL was different and the script wasn't catching the changes, but it looked the same.

    I'm running Firefox 39.0 with Greasemonkey 3.3

    I'm going to see if I can get a few example URL's for you of when it works vs doesn't work, maybe that will help troubleshoot?

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  5. I thought maybe it was related to special characters being in the search string/URL, but I'm getting inconsistent results.

    The filter displays correctly with this search URL:

    http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=HD9350ODJ4BGH&_sacat=0

    But it does not appear with this search URL:

    http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=intel+%28i5+560m%2Ci5-560m%29&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=%28HD9350ODJ4BGH%2CHD9350ODJ4BOX%29&_sacat=0

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  6. I had scheduled to look at the script later tonight, so that should help testing, thanks.

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  7. No problem, happy to help in a constructive manner, unlike the ingrate you had to deal with last week. I for one very much appreciate that you still support this script, so I'm more than happy to spend a few minutes running some searches to see when the filter does and doesn't appear. Thanks for taking the time to look into this!

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    1. OK, I think I found and fixed the issue. Let me check with a couple difference searches and TamperMonkey to see if everything works, then I'll upload an update within the next few hours if everything checks out.

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    2. OK, new version is up on Greasyfork's site, successfully tested with your link, as well as Tampermonkey for Chrome. Thanks for your help. I'll post a general announcement in the next 24 hours.

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  8. Yay, it works again! THANKS!

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  9. Hi, me again! I just realized that the filter is not appearing when you select "Include description", because the URL is different.

    The script should also include http://www.ebay.*/dsc/* and https://www.ebay.*/dsc/* by default for that to work correctly (tested by adding them to the User Settings includes)

    Thanks again, so happy to have this working again!

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    1. Well, that seems simple enough. I'm kind of busy right now, but I'll try to get an site update out there in the next couple of days. Thanks.

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  10. Is there a way to filter out power sellers, I'm sure ebay won't provide that functionality, but how about a hack, an extension, a greasemonkey user script, something. I very much dislike power sellers' lack of time to answer questions promptly, their awfully simplistic descriptions, and those damn generic pictures, and the random sketchy payment method.
    ----------------
    Zobay

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  11. Yes, with the script there's a checkbox for not showing power resellers. I would check it for the exact wording, but right now I'm recovering from the full hard disk failure on the main development machine yesterday. But you should be able to see it next to the other fields. Latest version is on greasyforkl.org' site.

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  12. I like this script. Would it be possible to also add a country filter?

    I'd like to exclude all sellers from e.g. China, Hongkong ecc.

    Tnx in advance.

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  13. Hello. I'm not sure how to determine the origin of a seller's country based the information available. Is there an option to show that in a listing?

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