Hello, Dieter (and anyone else reading this),

Thank you for the copyfile procedure.  It's working beautifully.  Now when an auction closes, the file will go into an acrhive to be accessed by a copy of the program that won't check for ending time.  That's the plan, anyway, and now, thanks to you, it will have the data still in archive versions of the original categories.

Today, I changed some of the columns on the category display page.  Now it includes item number and seller and I dropped the category because it's redundent.  If you're looking at a category, you wouldn't need to see that category on each line of the listing.  

I especially like that this same listing is used for all searches and that displaying a category is really just another search.  That's probably why you have the category column, but I think the item number and the seller are more important to my type of auction than is the category.

On 151 I had thumbnails on both the category listing and the page where the new item was listed.  The latter was from a complaint that when the image names get changed, it's confusing to remember what photos are up and which still need to be loaded.  So the thumbnail next to the url box let her see what she had up.  

   I haven't been able to isolate the images in 161, though.  I see that the program reads the file and one variable is the $image.  It's actually a string of file names delimited by a space.  So it gets split to for the array.  Logicall, $image[0] should be the first photo that when displayed with a height of 50 would make a nice thumbnail instead of the camera image.  Since at least one photo will be required, there should always be something in $image.  If the line is blank, though, the camera url could be put into the file.

    The problem is the two ways of representing the image data.  If someone has the image in his own web space, the whole path gets put into the image array.  But if he uploads, only the names go in.  This means the program has to parse each element of the image array to see if it begins with "http://" or not.  Wouldn't it be easier if all images were treated the same?  What difference does it make if the iimage is on the same server or some other?  If the full url was there for each photo -no matter where it's stored, then the syntax would be much easier and there would be at least one process the program wouldn't have to run.

   Another thing I've been trying to show on the category/search result list is the time remaining.  The two dates and times aren't as friendly as "4 days, 5hrs and 16 min"  All a person wants to know is "how much time do I have and what time does it end?"  So he looks at the second date, then brings up the current date on his computer, mentally subtracts the end date from today to get the days, then subtracts 12 from the time to get the time of day.  Not very convenient when opening the auction figures it out for him.  But if he has to stop and open each auction, it really slows down the brouse process.

  So I see the subroutine to get time remaining but from the listing page, I can't seem to get the parameters it requires.  

    Neither the thumbnails or the time remaining is essential to the auction and I'll happily give up these features for your relist and modification options.  On 151 I was having to do that manually.

   Oh - one "bug?"   When you list a new item and make an error and have to go back, the first time you do this, it blanks the screen - the description and the images are gone.  Could this be the temp feature so that items that aren't confirmed in ten minutes are deleted?  Is there a way to extend this time - like by about an hour or two?  I know many people take a lot of time describing their item, checking thsie spelling, spacing, html links, and the like.  To spend two hors putting up a listing isn't unusual - and then to mistype your password and go back to find it all gone is enough to send them screaming to ebay.  (after I get a particularly nasty email, of course.)

And when you search for a keyword or a user name, it's case sensitive.  Even I was able to fix this with lc and know it's just an oversite but thought it worth mentioning.

Thanks!
Michele