As you may have noticed, I try to anonymize code before I post so that it cannot easily be traced back to any individual or company. When Jonathan S sent me some of the code that he came across while working at the world's number one auction website, I thought I might make an exception to the rule. After all, it is kind of interesting to see a piece of the inner workings of one of the top five websites. But I've decided to stick to my principles and conceal what company these snippets found on a single ASP page came from ...

 

<% L_Title_text = "iBay Site Search : New to iBay?" %>
<title><% = L_Title_text %></title>

 

... note that this is Method 1 for commenting out ...

 

<center><h2>Site Search</h2></center>
<% 'search form %>
<!-- <table width="100%" cellpadding="5" border="0"> -->
<!-- <table width=600 cellpadding="5" border="0"> -->
<table width="450" cellpadding="5" border="0">

 

... the iBay coders seem to really hate hard-coding text directly as HTML ...

 

<% 
  if NoCatalogs = true then
    L_NoCatalogs_text = _
      "<p>No catalogs are available for searching. New catalogs " & _
      "may be propagating. Please wait 10 seconds and try again.</p>"
    Response.write "<p><b>" & L_NoCatalogs_text & "</b>"
  end if
%>

...

<font face="Verdana,Arial,sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt">
  <% L_Find_text = " for documents containing"%> 
  <%=L_Find_text %>: 
</font>

 

... I should note that the following comment is not mine ...

 

<% ' this is all crap %>
<% if Request("advanced") = "yes" then %> 
  <%  Response.write "<p>" %> 
<% end if %>

 

... here is Method 2 for commenting out ...

 

<% 
  Response.write "<!-- <p> -->"
%>

 

... and finally, Method 3 ...

 

<%         
' search image button
'<td valign="center"><input type="image" align="bottom" name="Search" 
' src="Images/SearchButton.gif" border="0" width="50" height="28"> 
' </td>
%>

 

... some try to solve the problem, others just write about it ...

 

<% 
  ' this next <br> causes too much 
  ' whitespace when there is no query
  Response.write "<br>"
%>

 

... this last one was particularly interesting, especially considering that the page had nothing to do with OWA, Exchange, or anything but searching for auctions ...

 

<% end if ' End of check for OWA messages. %>
<% end if ' End of check for first Exchange message. %>
<% ' End of Microsoft Exchange Public Folder Results Setup Section. %>
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