JBidwatcher: eBay auction sniping software
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4Mouse MacWorld Logo JBidwatcher, reviewed in the November 2004 MacWorld, has received a 4 mouse product rating from the Macintosh experts at Macworld.
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These changelogs exist because Sourceforge broke their HTML encoding for the 'official' changelog pages, after 4 years of 'unofficial' support. It would be nice if a minimum of HTML had been supported, but instead I have to move all my changelogs to here, since they are much clearer in HTML form.


0.9.7 Release Notes and Changelog

Changes:

Features

  • Customizable Columns - You can right-click (or control-click on OS X) on the tabs, and completely customize what columns are shown for each tab, and the column customizations stick between sessions. There are several new columns to choose from, as well. New tabs initially inherit from the 'current' tab when created by searches.
  • Buy It Now - You can buy items directly from 'fixed price', or 'Buy It Now' listings. In conjunction, snipes and bids over BIN / Fixed Price values are rejected.
  • Subtract shipping from Snipes - A hugely requested feature, there is now a checkbox on snipes and multisnipes to subtract the shipping price from the snipe price.
  • RSS Feeds - a.k.a 'Gnomedex Mode' - You can 'subscribe' to several RSS feeds relating to data in JBidwatcher if you are running the internal web server. Those feeds can also be made accessible without logging in, for feed readers who don't handle authentication well.
  • Title-only searches are now supported in Search Manager.
  • Looks more like a native Windows executable for Windows. (Still requires the JRE, but has its own icon embedded, and much easier to download and run, and sets a better memory limit.)
  • Complete revamp of the Search creation and editing dialogs, including the ability to have multiple searches targetting a single tab, and better naming support.  (You no longer have to create, then rename, a search.)
  • There is now a nice display at the bottom of the screen, showing how much the sum total of all the selected auctions prices are, with approximations in USD if multiple currencies are selected, and shipping.
  • Many more message boxes have 'Don't show me this again' checkboxes.
  • The context menu has been shrunk, and reacts in a context-sensitive way to what you have selected.
  • Now detects most bids placed outside of JBidwatcher, and displays them.
  • Shipping, current and max bid are all sortable, no matter how many different currencies are represented.
  • If logging in to the user account failed, 'Not logged in' shows up in the upper right, instead of the eBay username and eBay time.
  • You can turn off JBidwatcher's 'deleted items' tracking in the General tab of the Configuration Manager.  This is so you can run a search and have all the items loaded, even if you deleted them in the past.  I recommend using this option sparingly.
  • Parsing code is a bit more robust in the face of unrecognized data, falling back to old values.
  • Many advanced (i.e. hidden) configuration options which will need to be documented.

Bug Fixes

  • Selection is preserved through delete events, add events, and resorting. Finally!
  • Reordering columns works, and is preserved between sessions, along with sort column and direction.
  • Multisnipes are no longer cancelled when you're the high bidder, but below the reserve.
  • If you ever turned on the proxy, but then turned it off, JBidwatcher still tried to use it, causing massive delays in almost all network activity! Fixed.
  • Should be much more resiliant in the face of network failures.
  • Ignores eBay's new 'blank' thumbnails.
  • Adult login works again.
  • Most item changes show up instantly, no moving the selection around to see them.
  • Does not hang when loading invalid searches.xml files.
  • The HTML view uses relative paths where possible.
  • Removed 'File | Exit' on the Mac.
  • Show Information' converts to a scrollable dialog if there are too many 'events'.
  • Searches can load hundreds of items at a time, again.
  • You can delete comments.
  • Initially all updates, snipes, and bids are put off until the first sign-in succeeds.
  • Delete now initially highlights 'OK', instead of requiring you to to tab to it.
  • Best Offer auctions don't show up as 'null' anymore, but are not yet supported.
  • Deleting an auction also removes the data that JBidwatcher keeps on disk related to that auction.
  • 30-day 'renew if unsold' store listings should automatically be recognized as 'alive' again, after completion.
  • Some failures to start or close due to odd characters in titles should be reduced, and maybe eliminated.
  • Recognize 'start time' and 'initial bid' prices, which we haven't been doing for months.

Known Issues

  • Some RSS readers will fail on the feeds provided when high-bit characters are in the eBay title.
  • Does not show the number of dutch items you are currently winning.
  • Does not take into account the multiple of 'won items' times 'dutch price' when calculating the price total.
  • Many requested columns are not yet implemented.
  • The snipe dialog sometimes gets into a bad state where it is mis-sized and 'OK/Cancel' are invisible, or the text input boxes are oversized.
  • Multiple monitor setups are still probably not working well, as I can't afford a dual-monitor setup to test on yet.
  • Often-repeating searches may cause memory issues over a long period of time on Windows.  This should be reduced in this version if you're running the .exe version, but it probably still exists.
  • Still no HTTPS proxy configuration in-program.
  • FAQ only got a few changes, and minor additions, it needs a lot more changes.
  • Cmd-I is still 'Add Auction' on OS X, although it's been pointed out that it should show information.  I just don't know what to replace it with.
  • RSS feeds won't work if the internal web server is disabled, but the checkboxes don't dance the 'disabled' dance properly, so you can have RSS feeds on, but the web server off, and it just won't work.
  • The program has gotten minimal testing with Java 1.5, so if you're running 1.5 and notice anything odd, it's doubly-important to report it.
-- Morgan Schweers