Ebay Class

Before Taking the Class

Students should be familiar with computer basics. This is not a beginner's class. If you want to take this class, you should already be able to:

• Use a mouse
• Right-and-left click with the mouse
• Type and use spell check
• Use the Internet
• Use email
• Use a digital camera

Students should have:

• Email Address
• Bank Account and Credit Card
• OR PayPal Account and eBay Account

Class Objectives

Using a standard Freekbox, students will be able to:

• Upload images from a digital camera
• Edit images using the Gimp or gThumb
• Write basic HTML
• Post items on eBay
• Sell items on eBay

Introduction

• What is your computer background?
• Have you used eBay before?
• Why are you interested in learning how to use eBay?

Creating eBay and PayPal accounts

• wooo
• whee

Upload images from a digital camera

1. Plug USB cable into camera, and turn the camera on in View mode.

• Ubuntu's Import Photos prompt should pop up on the screen as soon as you turn the camera on in View mode.

Importing digital images from camera, part 1

• Select the pictures you want to import (you can select more than one picture by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on additional pictures), and hit the Import button. The Import Photos application will create a folder in the Destination directory using the current time/date as the folder name and will automatically place all imported images in that folder. For example, if you import photos at 11:37:20am on May, 18, 2008 using /home/oem as the Destination, you will find all the images you imported at that moment in /home/oem/2008-05-18--11.37.20.

Importing digital images from camera, part 2

Edit images using gThumb or GIMP

There are several applications on your standard Freekbox that can be used for editing images. For this tutorial, we'll stick with gThumb and GIMP, both of which can be found under Applications -> Graphics in Ubuntu. If you'd like to do simple things, such as cropping and resizing images, gThumb is more than capable. If you'd like to do more advanced tasks, like adjusting color levels, GIMP is the way to go. The following will show you how to crop and resize images using both programs.

gThumb

• This is your standard gThumb window:

gThumb

• To edit an image, double-click on one of the thumbnails in the gThumb window. This will bring up the image window:

Opening image with gThumb

• To crop an image, select the Crop tool via Image -> Crop... on the window's dropdown menu. That should pop you into gThumb's Crop dialogue. Once you do that, draw a box around the part of the image you'd like to keep, and hit the Crop button in the upper left of the window. Once you're done, click on either the Save or Apply buttons in the lower right portion of the window:

Cropping with gThumb, part 1

Cropping with gThumb, part 2

• To resize an image, select the Resize tool via Image -> Resize... on the window's dropdown menu. That should bring up gThumb's Resize dialogue. Change the width and height appropriately, and make sure the Keep Aspect Ratio box is checked (if you don't have that box checked, your image will end up proportionally distorted when you resize it). Click the Scale button to perform the resize.

Resizing with gThumb, part 1

Resizing with gThumb, part 2

• Once you've made all the changes you'd like to make, save them by either clicking the Save button on the image window or File -> Save As... selection on the image window's dropdown menu.

GIMP

• Select the Rectangular Selection tool, which is located in the upper left corner of the GIMP's main window.

Rectangular Selection tool

• Crop out any excess background by selecting the area of the image you'd like to keep using the Rectangular Selection tool, right-clicking, and selecting Image -> Crop Image from the right-click menu.

Before selection

After selection

After cropping

• To resize images, right-click on the image and select Image -> Scale Image from the right-click menu. Once the Scale Image window appears, change the numbers in the Height or Width fields to the new size (make sure the chain icon connecting the Width and Height fields is present, as this makes the scaling of the image proportional), and click the Scale button when done.

Scaling image

• To save your edited image, go to GIMP's main window, select File -> Save As from the menu bar, and give your picture a unique name. Make sure to note where you save the image.

Write basic HTML

• It is not necessary to understand or know how to use HTML to sell items on eBay, but it certainly helps make auction listings look nicer. For the purposes of eBay, you really only need to use image and link HTML tags. As for editing HTML, you can use Text Editor (you can launch it from Applications -> Accessories -> Text Editor) to compose and edit web pages.

Images

• If you ever want to insert images into your auction listings without using eBay's gallery feature (which costs money), you'll have to learn how to use the image HTML tag. Your typical image HTML tag looks like this:

<img src="locationofimage">

• All you have to do is take the URL, or address, of the image you want and place it, in quotes, after the "src=" portion of the image tag.
• For example, the following HTML code:

<img src="http://llama.freegeek.org/~onsales/ebay/whoa.jpg">

gives us:

http://llama.freegeek.org/~onsales/ebay/whoa.jpg

Links

• There might come a time when you want to create a link to another web page somewhere within your auction:

<a href="pageyouwanttolinkto">text you'd like to appear as the link</a>

• This is a little more complicated than the image HTML tag. You have to do is take the URL, or address, of the web page you want to link to and place it, in quotes, after the "src=" portion of the image tag.

<a href="http://freegeek.org">Click here for some Free Geek action</a>

gives us:

Click here for some Free Geek action

Post items on eBay

• Instructions will go here
• And here

Sell items on eBay

• Instructions will go here
• And here