Free Online Shopping Tools
We’ve noticed that a number of users are checking ALL of the exclude filter options. Checking all of the boxes will prevent you from seeing most if not all items.
The viebuy.com filter screen has been changed to warn about this and clarify it a bit:
If you check all the boxes, you will be excluding free shipping items, returnable items, best offer items, etc.
The same is true for BINSniper. We will update the the BINSniper screen in 3.01.
We’re happy to announce the new BINSniper 3.0 system.
Requirements
This version requires Firefox 29 or higher. Prior versions required Firefox 13.
Performance Changes
Throttles and speed controls have been removed.
All searches now run simultaneously at top speed. All items are streamed to your browser as soon as they are received from the feeds.
The new system fetches items using our server farm and streams only the relevant item content to your browser. This is on average a 95% reduction in bandwidth and processing time. Your browser will no longer continuously fetch and parse items for each search, but will wait for new items to be sent from the server. This is more mobile-friendly and should provide the fastest access to items while also reducing the processing time on your device.
Changes at eBay
As previously posted, eBay has migrated their systems to a new platform that is delivering new items in batches. The eBay sites are now using the same data feeds that we use.
It is important to be aware that while new items may have starting times 10-20 minutes in the past, they are just being posted on the eBay sites too.
BINSniper displays a star next to new listings so that they can be identified even when they are being batched. A new sorting option has been added to allow you to select sort arrival time or start time. Start times reflect the time of record (when the listing was submitted to eBay), arrival time reflects the time the items was sent to the feeds, posted on eBay sites, and arrived at your browser. Arrival time is the default and works best with the new batched system used by eBay.
Feeds and Channels
BINSniper 3.0 introduces channels which correspond to top level eBay categories on an eBay site. For instance “US – Antiques” will only contain items from the eBay.com site in the Antiques category its sub-categories . By focusing your searches on the types of items you want, you receive more targeted results.
From Searches to Filters
The new design necessitates some changes in the search concept. Your search filters need to choose a channel to monitor. If you need to monitor multiple channels, you can setup multiple filters. The filters subscribe you to a channel and listen for matching items.
Due to some limitations in the eBay data feeds and the design changes in the system, some search features in BINSniper 2.x cannot currently be supported in BINSniper 3. These are:
The new system adds the following search capabilities:
New Keyword Search Features
You can now search using extended search syntax, including wildcards, boolean search and negative searches. Complete details are in the user’s guide.
Here’s a simple example: ipad -blue*
This finds items where the title contains “ipad” but does not contain any word starting with “blue”. So blue cases and bluetooth headsets would be excluded.
UK and EU users
Server selection has been removed, and all users are now hosted by the US server.
Since bandwidth requirements have been significantly reduced in the new system, overall operation should be faster for international customers.
Get the Addon
You can get the new version direct from our site here http://auctionbucks.com/binsniper.xpi
It will also be available from the Mozilla Add-ons page shortly at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/binsniper/versions/
And available thru automatic updates once approved by Mozilla.
Docs are here: http://auctionbucks.com/binsniper
The article describes performance tuning for the eBay website for VieBuy and BINSniper 3.0 or higher.
How this varies from the BINSniper 2.x recommendations:
BINSniper 3.x is more efficient on the network and performs better over 3G, WiFi and satellite connections too. There are no settings that improve item delivery speed.
The following Firefox setting can be used to improve image and script loading time on fast network connection. This primary impacts load time of the eBay pages.
Enter about:config into the Firefox address bar (where you type URLs). A settings list should appear. You may receive a warning first. If you do, accept the warning screen.
Enter the following into the search box:
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
Warning: This setting affects all websites. Increasing this setting too much may result in excessive demands being place on servers and you being banned. 10 is a reasonable maximum.
Double click to adjust the setting. Increase it to 10.
If this setting does not exist, right click the blank area of the screen and select New->Integer. Paste the name into the preference box, click OK, and enter 10 for the value.
Increasing this setting can improve image and script loading time on eBay. Image loading may be improved on BINSniper and VieBuy websites when many items are displayed. This setting has no effect on item delivery speed.
Network Pipelining
Firefox has settings to enable network pipelining that are widely recommended as cure-alls. While these may improve performance in some cases, they are not likely to improve BINSniper performance for most users. Broadband users are unlikely to see any improvements at all in any circumstances by modifying the Firefox settings. Pipelining may also introduce some security risks. See this article at sys-con for more information on these issues. We do not recommend pipelining to improve BINSniper performance.
Use more specific searches for better speed and ease of use
For best performance, you should make your searches as tight as possible. Very broad searches will result in the entire item list being replaced with each update. More specific searches will yield fewer results and make it easier to work with the lists. You can use the streamer mode to separate lists on the screen, one for each search.
Limiting the number of searches improves display time on your browser. But more importantly it allows you to focus only on items that you would actually buy.
For example, if you have the following searches:
ipod nano blue case
ipod shuffle blue case
You could replace these with:
ipod blue case
The nano and shuffle searches would be included, as well as other ipod models.
Or you can use the OR syntax to limit the results to nano and shuffle only:
ipod blue case (nano, shuffle)
which means: items containing “ipod” and “blue” and “case” and either “nano” or “shuffle”
Pale Moon
Pale Moon is a performance optimized version of Firefox for Windows. Pale Moon is (or was) derived from Firefox code, and has some hardware restrictions. It is not supported by Mozilla. Some BINSniper users are running Pale Moon, but we cannot provide support for it. The current release does not appear to implement the necessary features of Gecko 29+ required by BINSniper. We have not tested any version for performance or compatibility.
We are recommending that everyone disable the BIN Filtering option in BINSniper. This option is interacting with the new eBay process of batching items and may be preventing new items from being displayed.
As we previously posted, eBay is now batching items and publishing them on a delay that ranges from 0-15 minutes. Items are published to the feeds and the website at the same time. If your BIN filter is set below the delay time, the items won’t appear.
You should disable the feature or set it to at least 20 minutes.
The option will be removed in BINSniper 3.0 (coming very soon).
New in BINSniper 2.8:
Tested thru Firefox v32, minimum Firefox v13
For the full features list see the BINSniper User Manual.
Download
Version 2.8 is available via Mozilla or directly from this site.
Thanks to a lightning fast review turnaround at Mozilla (under 10 minutes!), this add-on is already reviewed and should be available shortly thru the Firefox updater.
We’ve applied an update to our system that should fix email issues with AOL for some users. If you’ve had trouble confirming your AOL email account for use with BINSniper, you should be able to do so now.