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JBidwatcher: eBay auction sniping software

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Current Stable Version

February 23, 2009
JBidwatcher 2.0.1

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January 3, 2010
JBidwatcher 2.1pre5

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Older News

JBidwatcher, reviewed in the November 2004 MacWorld, has received a 4 mouse product rating from the Macintosh experts at Macworld.
Thank you MacWorld!

Older News (September 8, 2008) -- JBidwatcher 2.0 beta 8 is available!

Step by step it's getting better. 2.0beta7 had some problems with duplicating auctions, and in certain cases doubling the actual columns. 2.0beta8 resolved many of them, and the latest version (2.0beta10) should finally ease those issues.

This version is not expected to resolve all of the after-auction-updating problems, early move-to-completed oddness, delete and immediately re-add, or problems upgrading from 1.0.2. This version may expose other issues that were hidden behind the fixed bugs, but it should still be a better version than 2.0beta7. As usual, if there are ANY problems, please let me know.

I'm putting this beta out now, to try and resolve a lot of the problems users are having with the 2.0beta7, and because I believe a soon upcoming version will be getting a pretty deep redesign of the sniping and updating engine, and I want to get a fixed version out before I start down that path, in case it takes longer than I expect.

Older News (August 13, 2008) -- JBidwatcher 2.0 beta 7 is available!

The previous version (2.0beta6) was definitely better than 2.0beta5, but exposed a number of issues that were hidden, including more launch failures, problems updating auctions, incorrect sort orders for currencies, repeated save errors, and more. The latest version should resolve those, and should also help with the occasional issue where the display configuration on Mac OS X would get corrupted, lose it's columns, and persist in that state. As a related change, this may also reduce long term memory usage on some systems.

Older News (August 5, 2008) -- JBidwatcher 2.0 beta 6 is available!

JBidwatcher 2.0beta3 has been having some severe issues, including problems with snipe timings. Nothing that should be causing major issues, but it's possible for it to repetitively try snipes, not realizing it succeeded, and in the worst (and rare) case, fail to snipe. I had reports that some very early testers have had launch failures running JBidwatcher 2.0beta5, and these are fixed in 2.0beta6.

I believe this version to be more stable than 2.0beta3, but if you have problems running it, please let me know, so I can try and debug them quickly.

This version improves the '--usb' parameter to mostly do everything folks who want to run JBidwatcher off a USB could want. It also fixes many small UI issues here and there, including a new library on Mac OS X for UI issues. It should improve the database consistency, support returns for 'don't reload delted items', bid result recognition is improved, items with '<' and '>' in their title can be brought into JBidwatcher, and sorting is generally kept more consistent. Feedback detection works again. There should be some performance gains as well. More info will be at the 2.0beta6 changelog.

Best of luck with your auctions!
— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Older News (May 1, 2008) -- JBidwatcher 2.0 beta 3 now available!

Older News (April 27, 2008) -- JBidwatcher 2.0 open beta now available!

JBidwatcher 2.0 has reached a reasonably stable plateau, thanks entirely to the great alpha and beta testers who have been bashing on it and filing bugs. It's not done yet, and I'm abusing 'beta' like everyone else in the Web 2.0 world, but I think it's about time everybody got their hands on JBidwatcher 2.0.

The release process for this was particularly 'interesting', because a show-stopper slipped past me, was caught in the nick of time, and while I was trying to fix it, my monitor died and I had to go run out and get a new, crappy one, so I could finish up.

There are a lot of features that have gone into this version, but most of them are under the covers. A substantial refactoring of the code has allowed me to add several major features and fix the behavior in many places. The changes include scripting, a good database underneath, better memory usage, a few new UI features (including a thumbnail view!), recognition of wake-from-sleep, better date and end-of-auction recognition.

Once again, I'd like to expressly thank Laurence Passmore, who filed many bug reports, and provided several great patches for this latest version. His interest in making it work right was a catalyst for getting me to focus on releasing the JBidwatcher 2.0 beta before my first kid comes. :) Especially because in the last few moments before I was about to release the 2.0 beta publicly, he found a critical bug that would have failed entirely for new users. There are bugs remaining, and they're all my fault. :) The public beta is to hash that stuff out.

Windows and Linux across the board, but it means that OS X 10.4 or later will be required for the Mac. I feel comfortable with two major versions back (So OS X 10.4 and 10.5, Java 1.5 and 1.6), as it combines the maximum number of people who will be able to use it, and a relatively usable development environment.

The final version is intended to upgrade the 1.x data directories cleanly (and if the betas don't, that's something that definitely needs to be reported!), but if you have an earlier alpha/beta of 2.0, it may not upgrade quite as data cleanly. (It should, but it's a lower priority bug for me.)

So if you're interested in trying the new code, make a backup of your JBidwatcher data first, so you can restore it before running the final version.

JBidwatcher's source code is available and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA, and can be tracked via git or subversion. The only exception to the license is the new icons. Those are commercial icons, which I bought for JBidwatcher 2.0.

Older News (August 11, 2007) -- JBidwatcher 1.0.2 is released.

This version fixes the multiple breakages eBay introduced over the last few weeks, including changing the title format, removing (then adding back) the end date, and start date, many changes to different listing types, the change of the official time server URL, underbid page recognition, lots of bugfixes and features by Laurence Passmore (especially in the currency realm). Also added is a File menu option to clear Deleted entry tracking, which has been responsible for memory issues for some users. Moved 'Bid' away from 'Snipe' in the context menu, to reduce errors. A minor improvement in performance (auctions should update faster). Some issues when the seller moves the end date and a snipe was pending have been fixed, as well. Lots of behind-the-scenes fixes for consistency and better behavior. OSX Shutdown shouldn't be cancelled anymore if you don't have any snipes outstanding, or you've told it not to warn you on close.

Whew. It's been a rough few weeks, and if I was brusque with anyone during that time, I apologize. There were a lot of changes, one after the other.

I honestly couldn't have gotten through the last three weeks of JBidwatcher issues without the incredible help of everyone on the JBidwatcher Forums.

I'd like to especially call out Laurence Passmore who supplied many patches, and helped talk through a bunch of fixes and features, and was tireless in helping folks on the forums! Also, Hans who was the first-responder, and got a patched version to folks before I even woke up the morning it broke. Stefan W and Charles M. both provided me with their auction information, to help resolve a key error that happened during saving. There were many others, and everybody helped out during this unpleasant time. I'm really, really happy to see that, and I hope the new forums helped make it a bit easier.

More information is available at the JBidwatcher 1.0.2 changelog. (Not written yet; sometime Saturday...)

Mac OS X users can download an app.tar.gz.
Download (it'll automatically decompress) and double-click the .tar file to extract the Application!
Windows users can download a Windows executable!
You can also download the Java binary for any other platform, including Linux and Solaris.
Launch with: java -Xmx512m -jar JBidWatcher-1.0.2.jar
As always, you can download the source and build it for yourself.

Older News (April 29, 2007) -- JBidwatcher 1.0.1 is released.

This is a minor bugfixes and cleanup release. eBay's changed a few things over the last few months, and JBidwatcher needed some changes to recognize them. I've also tried to reduce the frequency of some other bugs. I've also put in a feature allowing people to choose to 'browse to' items through my site, which would allow me to gain some minor affiliate revenue, without actually trying to get the affiliate revenue for actions done in JBidwatcher. Most of all I've tried to improve the documentation. There's a whole new FAQ (different from the one in the program), the in-program FAQ has also been updated some, and I've created a new set of forums for community discussion of JBidwatcher.

Older News (September 4, 2006) -- JBidwatcher 1.0 is released.

It's been five months since the last release, and 1.0pre6 has been incredibly stable, in the eBay front until their latest change. Happily they rolled it back, but I fully expect them to re-release it.

The issues with JBidwatcher 1.0pre6 have mostly been user interface issues, and some of those caused freezes on startup and shutdown. After a lot of incredibly useful bug reporting and help from my users, especially Andreas Stempfhuber (db1ras), who worked with me a great deal to narrow down UI issues, freezing issues, and provide a voice of sanity when I made too many changes. :)

While it's been 5 months since my last release, it's been 6 years and 5 months since the first code was checked into the open source repository at Sourceforge.

As I said in the last release, while JBidwatcher will never be perfect, because at any moment eBay can change things, it is doing very well right now.

It's been a long time coming.

Best of luck with your auctions!

Older News (March 31, 2006)

It's time to shoot the engineer, and ship the code. I've been promising a new version for a while, and 1.0pre5 seemed very stable. A few cosmetic issues were reported, and I've corrected those. A few remain, so I'm keeping it as a 'pre-release', but everybody needs to upgrade. 0.9.9, the last official release, has been broken for too long, due to eBay's last set of changes.

It's been a long time since the last official update, which is (imo) a good thing, as it means the project has been stable for a while. While it will never be perfect, because at any moment eBay can change things, it is doing very well right now.

More information is available at the JBidwatcher 1.0pre6 changelog.

Mac OS X users can download an app.tar.gz.
Download (it'll automatically decompress) and double-click the .tar file to extract the Application!
Windows users can download a Windows executable!
You can also download the Java binary for any other platform, including Linux and Solaris.
Launch with: java -Xmx512m -jar JBidWatcher-1.0pre6.jar
As always, you can download the source from a mirror close to you and build it for yourself.

Best of luck with your auctions!

If you run into anything that seems wrong, or needs to be fixed, please file a bug! I appreciate the efforts of my bug-finders immensely, and they make the program better for everyone!

Older News (March 16, 2005)

It's been a great run, all the way since October of last year, through my wedding, and honeymoon, since a major revision has been necessary. (Thanks very much to all the users who congratulated me and my wife; we both appreciate it very much, and are amazed at the decency and generosity of the fans of JBidwatcher!) It's been one of the longest stable periods of time in JBidwatcher's history. However, along with fixing the recent changing of eBay's site, I'm merging in a new version that fixes a lot of long-standing issues, and adds a few new, really nice features.

Hopefully I'll have the chance this weekend; I didn't have it last weekend, there were too many issues to fix, and I found myself deciding at around 11pm on Sunday night that I wasn't going to be able to make a release that weekend.

Since then many of the issues have been resolved, I've found fixes for all the reported issues EXCEPT for the issue of multisniping not always being cancelled after a snipe succeeds. That's a major bug in the new code, and I'm still working on it.

For now, please check the developer blog for updates, and keep an eye on this page as well, for the upcoming release! If you're interested and technically minded, you can always pull down the CVS tree (instructions), or browse the very raw 'whatsnew' description that I build the official new feature and bugfix list off of.
-- Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX

Older News (November 14, 2005)

eBay has announced that their API is being made available free of charge for developers using their new unified XML API. This would be great news for JBidwatcher, if that included their bidding API. Right now it doesn't; the exact quote from an eBay developer relations person is:

The Place Offer API is something we are just opening up and requires a special contract to use.

I'm willing to sign the special contract, as long as it doesn't contain anything disasterous like a 'no sniping' clause. The problem is that if it does, or if they won't allow me access for whatever reason, I can't sign up as a developer, because accepting the developer contract involves promising not to scrape their HTML anymore. Since bidding is such an integral part of JBidwatcher, I'm not certain right now what the answer would be.

If I can get the entire program over to the API, I'll be ecstatic, as it means no more sleepless nights fighting to figure out just what changed as part of their latest release. It's not all happiness and light; their authentication process is designed for centralized web sites, not for programs running on every user's desktop, so it's a bit complex. (More complex than the current method, which is entering your username and passwrd into JBidwatcher.) Also, the daily API limit of 1.5 million calls might be an issue, but one I hope to be able to work out with them.

There's a light at the end of this tunnel, and as long as it's not an oncoming train, JBidwatcher may actually go 1.0 this year.
— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Older News (October 13, 2005)

After a really long time (well, 2 months) in development, the newest version of JBidwatcher is unleashed! This time, the changes are both deep under the hood (a much improved sniping engine) and up close and visible (a somewhat cleaned up interface and support for lots more thumbnails). Also, sadly, I bid farewell to the affiliate program as eBay has forbidden sniping programs to be part of it. I've also added an advanced configuration tab in the Configuration Manager. It's for advanced changes only. (Mostly it's so when someone has a problem, I don't have to direct them to edit their config file, they can just enter the appropriate values in the boxes.) There's a lot more, but the main thing to be aware of is that sniping should be VASTLY more accurate, time-wise.

Older News (August 8, 2005)

Ah, those summer months when eBay makes new and interesting changes to their code, and developers of eBay software can only scratch their head wondering why... eBay changed the URL format for items returned in searches and browsing, so JBidwatcher searches and drag-and-drop were not working anymore. This version fixes that, of course. The bigger news for Windows users is probably that I've added the long requested feature of minimizing to the system tray on Windows. There are several other changes, including attempting to speed up bids and snipes as users were noting how long the process seemed to be taking compared to earlier versions.

Older News (July 13, 2005)

The eventful summer months are here again. eBay changed their title format, which is used by JBidwatcher to extract a few pieces of information. This broke JBidwatcher's ability to load or update items. Thus, 0.9.7.1 is released. This also fixes a few outstanding minor (and not so minor) issues, including being able to cancel 'Buy' operations, and the Windows .exe version saving session data between runs.

Older News (July 1, 2005)

Here's hoping this version brings some fireworks to the party! The 0.9.7 version of JBidwatcher is now released! I can't tell you how exactly how much work has gone into this, but I believe it's in the hundreds of hours of work. Please read the change log to get an idea of the changes in this version.

Older News (April 25, 2005)

JBidwatcher 0.9.7pre2 has been released, to handle the two problems users were recently encountering. First, eBay made another change which broke bidding and sniping. Second, some users were having hangs on startup. For those cases that were NOT related to the broken Mac OS X 10.3.9 update, this version hopes to fix those.

Older News (April 4, 2005)

JBidwatcher 0.9.6 has been released, in response to an eBay change which broke bidding and thereby sniping. This version also fixes a time-slippage problem that had plagued 0.9.5 users. Other than that, the majority of changes are internal, for future features. See the change log for marginally more details.

News Flash (November, 2004)

JBidwatcher has received a 4 mouse rating from MacWorld, is going to be shipping in the MacWorld Italia CD, is on the front cover (and spine!) of Linux Pro Magazine, and shipped in the c't (German computer magazine) CD.

It's pretty astonishing to see a free and niche software package receive this kind of attention, but I'm very happy about it! As the sole developer, except for a few useful snippets from my users, I'm exceptionally proud to have produced a program that gets 4 mice from MacWorld and makes the cover of a Linux magazine. Thanks very much to all my users for pushing me to make the program as best as I can!

JBidWatcher, reviewed in the November 2004 MacWorld, has received a 4 mouse product rating from the Macintosh experts at Macworld.

Thank you MacWorld!

Older News (October 4, 2004)

JBidwatcher 0.9.5 has been released! This version fixes the breakage due to eBay's shift to SSL-only logins, as well as allowing My eBay 'Bidding' and 'Watching' pages to be imported correctly. (Importing items you're selling is still best done with a 'Seller Search' in the Search tool.) This version has many other changes as well, see the change log for the complete list.

Some problems have been reported with betas of 0.9.5 and adult auctions, but these are believed to be resolved with the release version.

Older News (July 13, 2004)

JBidwatcher 0.9.3 was finally let loose, only to find that eBay had recently changed their shipping info block, just a tiny bit, which broke the new version. 0.9.3.1 should fix the shipping value being recognized (again!), and the 0.9.3 version fixed several problems with recognizing bids that either were not successful, or were but with some caveats (over/under reserve), and many other changes. It's been a good, solid, long time since my last release, and I think this one makes good strides forward. Sorry about the quick re-release, but I hadn't put the 'upgrade!' message out yet, so I decided to roll it in before the majority of users upgraded.

Older News (March 28, 2004)

For once I'm releasing a new version not because eBay changed something, but because I've added new functionality. The features are pretty deep, enabling better management of auctions in general. The primary new feature is customizable tabs, and moving items between tabs. Also tied into this is the search mechanism, which now puts the search results in tabs named for the search results. (This requires naming the search.)

Older News (January 23, 2004)

I rather amicably parted ways from the company I worked for recently, after about 2 and a quarter years. I joined when they were still a little scrappy payments startup, and now I'm intensely proud of what we built, the team that I helped build and the good we did for the users, and the much-larger company who now owns us, but I'm melancholy because it's time for me to move on.

I'm writing this now, because I'm finally out of the hospital and recovering nicely from an unpleasant operation that followed my departure. My life has been a touch complex recently, as you might imagine. I won't bore with the details, but I'm still recovering from both, which happily involves relaxing in both cases. Looking for work will come soon after I feel sufficiently recovered from both.

Older News (January 4, 2004)

eBay was on a roll. A month ago, they changed the bidding process once more, and broke sniping and bidding. They then promptly unbroke it again, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far, the program works fine. I'll warn folks if that changes, both here and via a fake 'update' message. In the mean time, I've started a 'Developers Blog', to keep those who are interested up-to-date with what I'm doing. I did this because I've been coding on JBidwatcher, but not really talking about the coding much on the message boards, because it's not immediately relevant. The permanent home for the link is on the left sidebar, directly underneath Feature Requests.

Older News (November 24, 2003)

A week ago, eBay once again changed how bidding works on their site, and this change broke JBidwatcher. The newest version (0.9.3pre1) resolves that. This version is a pre-release, as it's being a bit more rushed than I'd like. It is, however, absolutely necessary if you want to snipe on auctions.

Older News (September 27, 2003)

On Monday, eBay changed how bidding works on their site, and this change broke JBidwatcher, unfortunately. This new version resolves that, as well as several MacOSX UI bugs, adds a few minor new features, and in general improves the program. Also new in this version is a FAQ, available off the help menu! This is my first attempt at any kind of decent documentation for the program, please let me know what else you'd like to see!

Older News (July 7, 2003)

eBay's finally getting close to really pushing their 'BIBO' (?) massive View Item UI reorg live, and so I've got a new version which should handle the new format relatively cleanly. PLEASE do report any bugs in the program to me, as this version was a little rushed, since I have reason to believe that eBay's going to switch to the new format Monday.

Older News (May 24, 2003)

JBidwatcher 0.9.1 is in the works... eBay has been extremely kind to developers of scraping programs, providing a way to test their code on live data by adding '&bibo=1' to the view item URL.

I am working on this, although my work schedule leaves terribly little time to actually work on my own projects right now. My quote before was

"I don't have time for both work and sleep, so I'm cutting back on sleep..."

It's still true, sadly, but I realize that JBidwatcher working depends on my getting this code in. That version will also fix the commonly reported problem of non-USD Buy-Now listings not loading into the program. (This also causes issues for users loading 'My eBay' pages that happen to include an item that has that problem.)

It's been a good long set of months since 0.9 was released, and I hope that things stay as stable after eBay's 'big changes'. The version I will release will support both their current and their next layout in one package, so nobody will have to emergency upgrade... As long as I can get it out before eBay rolls to the new layout.

As usual, if you're having an immediate problem, or need an interim version that will handle the non-USD Buy-Now problem, please drop me an email, and I'd be happy to get you a beta of the next version.

Thanks to all my users for your patience, support, and bug reports! The feedback is what keeps me really happy to work on JBidwatcher.

-- Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

Older News (March 16, 2003)

Happy pre-St. Patricks Day

JBidwatcher 0.9 has finally been released. This fixes the problem of loading items from My eBay, primarily. It also has fixes for many other minor bugs, as well as a number of UI cleanups, and a few major new features.

Older News (December 22, 2002)

M e r r y C h r i s t m a s

JBidwatcher 0.9pre5 has been released, fixing the problem where eBay auctions simply wouldn't load at all. eBay had changed their main item viewing page substantially.

This version also fixes a few international bugs, and many of the annoying small exceptions that would get printed out sometimes. It also saves and loads the searches.xml file correctly (where search manager entries are saved), and adds a minor feature where 'Show in Browser' can be used with multiple items if you're using 'Internal Webserver'. It will show a nice 'Next/Prev' and indexed access to the various auctions you selected to view.

Older News (November 25, 2002)

JBidwatcher 0.9pre4 has been released, fixing synchronizing with 'My eBay' and the HTTP proxy bug, adding an incredible search manager, browsing to country-local sites for eBay, sniping in a seperate thread, swiss currency support, more safety checks for multisniping, and dozens of other small changes.

This version adds an extremely complex feature (the search manager), and this is very definitely a pre-release, if there are any problems, PLEASE file a bug! It's the primary way the program gets better.

Older News (October 28, 2002)

JBidwatcher 0.9pre3 has been released, to fix a problem with synchronizing with eBay time. eBay changed their time format display and therefore JBidwatcher wasn't able to match their time. This caused problems with sniping, because it couldn't know exactly when the end of auction was, to be able to snipe on it.

There are a few features in this version (tooltip display of comments made on auctions!), but one of the most important non-visible changes is that files are now stored in the users home directory, instead of wherever happened to be your current directory when running the program.

The files (JBidWatch.cfg, display.cfg, auctions.xml, and any error logs) are stored in the following locations:

Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD
Windows
MacOSX

This is a pre-release, if there are any problems, PLEASE file a bug!

One already-known bug is with proxy support. HTTP proxies are supported, only if you edit the JBidWatch.cfg file, to remove any reference to proxy.user and proxy.pass. Do this after you have configured your HTTP proxy in JBidwatcher, but while JBidwatcher is NOT running. (It will overwrite the JBidWatch.cfg file on exit, otherwise.) The full 0.9 version will have that fixed. If more bugs crop up, I will release a 0.9pre4 with that fix as well as any others.

You can download the binary (or find it on one of Sourceforge's mirrors). Similarly, you can directly download the source, or look for a closer mirror to you. The total list of changes from 0.9pre2, 0.9pre1 and 0.8 along with release notes are available in the changelog.

Older News (September 24, 2002)

I released a second pre-release as an 'emergency fix' for users having trouble with the Euro. Basically, eBay altered their currency format, and put a strange character between the EUR and ##.## (the price). It caused prices to show up as e0.00, which was pretty bad. It didn't interfere with snipes, or anything like that, just with what amount JBidwatcher thought the auction was at prior to close. I think that post-close, the problem went away.

Older News (September 7, 2002)

The first pre-release of 0.9 has been released today. This is an emergency release, effectively, because eBay changed their site on September 5, and this broke the code that I use for bidding. This fixes that, but also adds a great deal of new features that I've been working on since the 0.8 version.

Some of these features include Dutch auction support (Power auctions for our German users), searching eBay directly, the status history display is much nicer, the configuration display has been cleaned up (thanks MUCHLY to Chris Halverson, whose patches helped a lot!), you can reverse a sort by clicking on the column title a second time, and the program warns you on close if you have outstanding snipes.

Older News (July 11, 2002)

Some cleanup on the site, including that pretty sidebar you see over <--- there.

I received a few complaints that it was too hard to find the download links, and the like. I figured it also gives me a chance to re-use that really cool piece of graphic art that Lisa Jennings (now Lisa Sample, and congrats on that!) did for JBidwatcher. (Thanks muchly!)

I just purchased a cheap, small used MacOSX box (G3 Beige) to test against. There's an issue with OSX users seeing a 'flickering' of the display which I can't replicate on Windows, Linux, or Solaris. A bit of testing from the ever-friendly OSX users has shown that the JRE doesn't turn on double-buffering by default, but even setting that doesn't completely fix it. (0.8 still seems to flicker about every 10 seconds instead, with double-buffering on.) I'll do my best to get a fix together, probably combining the double-buffering with a check to see if any auctions NEED per-second updating (i.e. are less than an hour away from completion). Apologies to OSX users who find this extremely frustrating. It's a JRE issue, combined with my new feature to refresh once a second, for a more accurate time display.

Older News (June 29, 2002)

The full release of JBidwatcher 0.8 is finally out! This is an amazingly stable, featureful, clean, and usable version. This is in no small amount thanks to the volumes of feedback, error logs, and other information that I got from users over the pre-release series. This version wouldn't have been anywhere near as good without all the bug reports and help that I got.
Thank you all!

I hope you enjoy this version, I'm VERY pleased with it, and I hope you will be also!

Older News (June 8, 2002)

I have released a fifth pre-release of JBidwatcher 0.8. You can download the binary or the source directly from here. The reason for this intermediate release is that eBay has begun putting some strange characters in their end-dates, which confused my older parsing code. This version fixes that, as well as decreasing how often auctions should be marked as ended, but not moved to the 'completed' tab. I'm still tracking down some other bugs, and had hoped to have those done in order to release a full 0.8 release. This version also has a few minor new features (strikeout through snipes that are now under the current legal bid price, showing auction end dates instead of just 'auction ended'), and one major new feature.

The major new feature is an auto-updater, which regularly checks for new versions being released. From this point on, any new version should be auto-detected like this. You can turn it off on the main (General) configuration options screen.

The total list of changes from 0.7 along with release notes are available in the changelog.

Barring anything massive that has to be fixed, I expect this to be the last pre-release, and to release a solid 0.8 soon.

Older News (March 25, 2002)

The fourth pre-release of 0.8 has now been made available. You can download the binary or the source directly from here. This version addresses several serious issues found with the 0.8pre3 version. For example, a large amount of users would lose their ability to do updates. It also adds configurable double-click actions, better 1.4 compatibility (JRE 1.4 crashes when trying to read optimized .jpgs from a signed .jar file), cleaned up the UI some, and much, much more.

I'm still not ready to release a 0.8, as I feel there are issues that still need addressing, but this should be an extremely stable version for most users.

Please give it a try, and report any problems you run across. It is a pre-release, not a full release, but it should be vastly stabler and more usable than the previous versions, and I expect this to be either the last, or one away from the last pre-release before the full release of 0.8.

Older News (March 18, 2002)

I've released a new pre-release of JBidwatcher, that should address problems with signing into eBay (specifically 'My eBay' synchronizing, and adult auction logins), as well as some other minor fixes. The binary is available, as well as the source.

A preliminary change log and release notes are available as well, so you can have some idea what's been changed.

Late note: Web Start has been temporarily removed from the top of this document. Basically, it doesn't run the program from a consistent start location, so it seems like you lose your auction data files everywhere. JBidwatcher currently stores its auction information in the 'current directory', wherever you launch JBidwatcher from. This fails with Web Start, because it starts from the browser directory, the Web Start directory, and the desktop, depending on what mode you're using to launch.

If you still want to play with Web Start, you can try to launch the latest JBidwatcher right now. It needs priviledge to talk to eBay, and store your auction files locally, so it needs to be signed. Because a verified signature costs a lot of money ($200-$400), it's just self-signed, so the Web Start system will warn you direly about it. For now there's nothing I can do about the warning.

Before 0.8 gets released and Web Start enabling, I will make it use a consistent storage directory for the auction information, so Web Start can at least be used under 1.2.2 and 1.3 JREs. These are some of the reasons this is still a prerelease, and not a full release.

Older News (March 15, 2002 (Ides of March?))

Due to some currency formatting changes on eBay's site for US currencies, I've released a strongly recommended update to the 0.8 Prerelease 2. It can be downloaded from this location, and the source is available in CVS as the tagged release JBidWatcher08pre2.

I'm not ready to release a 0.8 yet, but this version is remarkably stable. The primary outstanding issue is that all access to eBay's adult auctions are also broken, as is synchronizing with 'My eBay'. Bidding and sniping on non-adult auctions still works fine.

I'll note in this space when I release a full 0.8, but until then, the prerelease is again very strongly recommended.

Older News (December 16, 2001)

I've release 0.7 of JBidwatcher, which is a recommended upgrade. It fixes a number of problems, including some stability, memory abuse, and cosmetic problems. One of the problems often seen is that auctions didn't have the right seller name if the auction used checkout, and it was updated after auction close.

Once again, I've added a number of substantial features in this release. The most important is multisniping. I've also added a little bit of help, to make it easier to understand the colors being used by the main display. For more details on the changes, see the release notes.

Go ahead and grab the binary and update right now (it is a drop-in replacement for any previous version), or if you're interested in the source code, grab that and take a look.

Older News (December 2, 2001)

Just a quick note... I went into an Apple store in the local mall today, and pulled up a laptop with MacOSX and an internet connection. I downloaded JBidwatcher (the 0.6 version), and ran it. It ran flawlessly. I dragged and dropped a few auctions (using IE on the Mac), and the auctions dropped into JBidwatcher perfectly. Everything seemed to work just fine! I'm really stoked, because I absolutely never tested it on MacOSX before, and it really, truly did work as 'Write Once, Run Anywhere'. If you use MacOSX, you should feel confident that the program will work for you as well!

Older News (October 11, 2001)

JBidWatcher is at 0.6, and is a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED UPGRADE. This especially fixes the login format issues, making synchronizing with My eBay work properly, as well as loading items you're selling, and viewing and bidding on adult items.

This version also adds a huge amount of features. From a much more responsive UI, to nicer toolbar icons, and a platform-oriented Look and Feel, it has really been heavily updated. For more information, look at the release notes.

Older News (September 10, 2001)

eBay has changed their login format. Synchronizing with 'My eBay', your selling items, or bidding on adult auctions will NOT work until my next release, which should be in a few days. All the code but the 'Items I'm Selling' synchronization is already in place, but not very well tested. Bidding on non-adult items works in the mean time, and sniping still works (again, on non-adult auctions). Sorry for the inconvenience, those other features will be available again shortly!

Older News (August 16, 2001)

JBidWatcher has been brought up to 0.5.1, fixing a very visible bug in setting the snipe timers. If you tried to set the snipe to fire closer (or further) from the auction end, it failed. It was a combination UI problem, and 'not quite all done' problem on the backend. It should be fixed now. A few other minor features were added, such as a functional firewall/web proxy configuration screen, and saving of the snipe timer between sessions.

This version is a must-get if you want to set the snipe timer to fire your auctions closer or further than the default 30 seconds.

As the release notes comment, a very simple Makefile has been added as well. It should make development a little easier, for anyone who wants to check out the source code.

Older News (June 26, 2001)

A large number of features, and fixes, have been incorporated into 0.5.0. For full details, see the release notes.

One feature which is NOT in the new version is a minor issue with 'My eBay'. In the past, the 'Synchronize with My eBay' function would set your max bid if you had bid on an auction outside of JBidWatcher. Due to their format changes, this feature has been disabled for the time being. You can still synchronize, and it will import all the auctions from your 'My eBay' bidding/watching page, and it will recognize that you have the high bid, but it won't know what your maximum bid was. I'm sorry about this, but I wanted to get this release out since the old version was broken by eBay's changes, and all the complexities with their 'My eBay' page would have taken a lot longer to work out.

The old version, once again, is unlikely to work with new auctions, and has sufficiently bad bugs that I highly recommend upgrading. The auction file format is compatible with the new one, so you'll lose nothing by upgrading.

Older News (January 19, 2001)

An interim version of JBidWatcher has been released! 0.4.5 is out, fixing the immediate problem with eBay's new auction ID format, recognition of whether you're winning a private auction (in most cases), and a LOT of bugfixing!

Since the old version won't work at ALL with many of the eBay auctions, you'll have to update to the new version in order to continue to use JBidWatcher.

You can read the release notes for this version, which will give MUCH more information on what was done.

Older News (October 19, 2000)

After a few months, the latest release (0.4) of JBidWatcher has been made available on the servers! It includes a lot of stability, usability, and bugfixes, as well as a few very notable new features. One major new feature is support for My eBay synchronization. It will load auctions from the 'My eBay' page, and include them in the auctions it is monitoring. For auctions that you've bid on, it will even recognize your high bid if you made it directly, instead of through JBidWatcher. Among the other useful features are support for outbound HTTP proxy servers, SOCKS servers, eBay Motors, and eBay Disney. You can also leave yourself comments on the auctions within the program. Possibly most importantly, though, is a complete revamping of the configuration UI, into a clean tab-based display. For more detail on any of these, see the full release notes and changelog.

Because of some major bugfixes, we HIGHLY recommend upgrading to this latest version as soon as possible. It is available as a binary or in source form. You can also hit the file list section under the JBidWatcher Sourceforge project.

Older News (August 17, 2000)

FINALLY! The new release (0.3.0alpha) of JBidWatcher is now up on the servers! It includes a LOT of new features, and hopefully a lot of performance and usability enhancements. One thing it includes is an XML-formatted save file. Please feel free to download the binary or the source and give it a try!

Older News (June 27, 2000)

Whoops! The *second* release of JBidWatcher is now available to download! There were a few problems with creating the configuration files from within the jar file which made it hard to use if you took it straight off the site, plus a few other minor bugs. You can download either the binary or the source. Or you can get them off the download page under sourceforge.
Once again, your bug reports and compliments are very welcome!

Older News (June 24, 2000)

YAY! The first release of JBidWatcher is now available to download!

If you're interested in submitting feature requests or bug reports, hit our bug report page.