What's New

Release

Changes

Only stable builds will be released. If you already have a version of Prospector installed, please uninstall it beforehand. All settings you have made will remain unchanged.

Changes:

• A new code signing cert was installed. If you have an installed and running version, this release is not needed.

Changes:

• A fix was done to password validation. Internally, this has been disabled.
  eBay may have an expired security cert on their site. If you should see a expired cert warning you can click past it.

Changes:

• Seller links to their other items from the Watch list have been fixed.

Changes:

• eBay made major breaking changes and this version adapts to them.

Changes:

• eBay made major breaking changes and this version adapts to them.

Changes:

• eBay made some breaking changes that affected the Bid Now feature for a few users. This version adapts to them.

Changes:

• The program now adapts to the version of Internet Explorer that's installed. Version mismatches were causing some images to not show correctly.

Changes:

• Our security certificate for the installation program is expiring and this release is only for new users looking to install the program. This update uses the new certificate. If you already have v3.14 running, there is no need to update to this version.

Changes:

• eBay made another breaking change to their thumbnail images. Please update to this version.

Changes:

• eBay made a change that affected Bid Nows. This fixes it.
• The price change indicator for lower prices has been changed to green. Thanks to JamesP.

Changes:

• eBay changed their addresses to thumbnail images. Please update to this version.

Changes:

• eBay made changes that broke Buy It Now and this fixes it.

Changes:

• Bid change detection has been added.

Changes:

• Price change detection - when the watch list is updated, price changes will now be flagged. Thanks to CharlesT for the suggestion.
  
  

Changes:

• Automatic refresh control for the browser has been updated to work better with newer IE versions.
• Fix for eBay returning some items with undocumented parameters. (Thanks to DannoH).

Changes:

• eBay made a breaking change with browser version requirements. This version fixes it.

Changes:

• eBay made a breaking change that affected Bid Nows and this adapts to it.

Changes:

• Fixed a bug in the seller settings for searches where unchecking the Seller Restrictions checkbox does not turn off blocking for the listed sellers. (Thanks to MarkJ and PaulT).

Changes:

• eBay made a breaking change in their bidding pages. If you use the program's bidder, please update to this release.

Changes:

• 2 different large thumbnail options have been added to the View menu / Thumbnails, and the names have been changed to span from XSmall to XLarge. The additions will let you see larger item pictures in the search results and watch list.

Changes:

• Fixed bug in XML import.
• Some settings weren't preserved in Seller Searches and this has been fixed.
• eBay changed the interface for Category Searches and this has been fixed.

Changes:

• New search restrictions have been added - Free Shipping, Lots Only, and Returns Accepted.
• Added Seller Business Type restriction. eBay only supports this on some sites. Notable exceptions are the US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. It allows you to say if you want to see only Business or Private seller listings on the sites that support it.
• Fixed bug where Seller Searches did not save Location restrictions.
• The minimum search replay time has been reduced to 2 minutes.
• Please note - eBay now restricts the number of categories per search to 3. We've added checking for this in the Tools menu / Check / Check Standard Searches.

Some of the new search options:

eBay made additional listing address format changes. The software depends on the these formats to tell if it's on an eBay listing. If the Watch feature does not add items to the watch list as expected, or if the Bid icon does not light up, you will need to update. We've re-implemented this, and it should be more robust going forward.

eBay has propagated the listing address format changes to other sites and a new format was found as well. (Thanks to Steve R.).

eBay changed the listing address format on the UK site and this update adapts to it.

Fixed a link generation bug that can occur in situations of poor network connectivity.

The Tools menu now has a Check Standard Search Queries option that will run through all your Standard Searches and warn you if you have any queries that violate eBay's 350-character length limit or if you have any run of non-space characters that exceed their 98-character "word" limit. (Thanks to Norman M.)

Updates of Bookmark Pages now force the browser to fetch the content from eBay and never serve it up from cache.

1/18 - We made some changes to improve the use of the browser cache.

Please note: The first time this version is run, the Registration box will be presented again. We apologize for this, but there isn't an easier and more reliable way to reset the country setting which will allow shipping information to be retrieved more extensively. (You'll see that the country has been reset back to the US default. Please choose the country you're in).

Prospector Options / Site tab now allows your location (postal / ZIP code and country) to be changed for shipping information. The About Prospector box now also shows this location setting.

The Preview box will show the item condition if it's available. (Thanks to Norman M.)

The diagnostic log output has been cleaned up.

Improved updating of invalid items in the Watch List.

Standard Searches that were set to use the "Any of these words" option were affected by the eBay change to limit "words" to 98 characters (documented here). This update fixes it. Thanks to Martin K.

Fixed a Category Search creation bug that occurs when a non-default search site is specified. (It was checking to see that the category list existed on the default eBay site, and sending the search to the default site as well). Thanks to Petr G.

Fixed browser navigation to work with Google Instant Search.

eBay changed their searches to return no results if any eBay id in the blocked seller list is invalid. This update will automatically remove any invalid ids and retry the search again.

We've added a Show Diagnostics Log menu item in the Help menu for easy access to the log. It's cryptic, but it will make diagnosis easier if there is a problem.

Updated Buy It Now following eBay changes.
Captured Searches were changed to work with eBay's new addressing scheme.

We have disabled the Reserve Not Met feature as we're not sure when eBay will fix the bug.

This is an optional update. eBay is still showing older version bidding forms to some users. If you are making use of the bidding tool, please update to this.

The bidder was updated following eBay changes.

Fix for a breaking change that eBay made to their listing addresses. This caused the bid paddle to not turn blue.

Prospector has undergone a significant update for searching with improvements made in search setup and result display.

For searching, the new options include item condition, best offer, and local pickup for Standard, Seller, Product Id, and Category searches.

For search results, shipping cost, item condition, and ship-to locations can now be shown. These options can be controlled through the Tools menu / Prospector Options / Results tab / Customize / Information tab.

For shipping, you can enter your postal / ZIP code in the Prospector Options / Site tab.

We're renumbering the version to 2.0 because of eBay's bidder restriction, and we've changed the Lite version to allow 100 searches per day. If you're on the Lite version and don't see this, please send an email to support@moxieproxy.com.

Prospector now has the option of bypassing its bidder with a call out to Desktop/Server Bidder for sniping.

Since Prospector's search capabilities are a superset of Desktop/Server Bidder, this ability gives you the flexibility and convenience of searching and bidding from one program.

To set this up, you can go to the Tools menu / Prospector options / Bidding tab, and select the External Bidder option. Choose the external bidder program to use (Desktop or Server Bidder) and that's it.

For security, both programs need to be on the same computer currently. We may add additional security and relax this requirement in future.

Changes

• Windows 7 support (32- and 64-bit) has been added.

• The Quick Search toolbar has been updated - eBay Express and Froogle have been removed, and Google Base has been changed to Google Product Search.

• Amazon will require that search calls be done in a new format. This will be a breaking change when they make the switch on August 15, 2009. If you're saving Amazon searches, an update to v8.1 (or newer) will eventually be needed.

• Amazon searches have new search indexes added:

• Canada: Electronics.

• France: Jewelry, Office Products.

• Germany: Automotive, Beauty, Home Improvement, Jewelry, MP3 Downloads, Office Products.

• Japan: Grocery, Jewelry.

• UK: Beauty, Home Improvement, Jewelry, MP3 Downloads, Office Products, Shoes.

• US: Shoes.

Changes

• We received a report and found that the search speedup changes in 8.0.3298 made search updates slower on single-core CPU systems in particular. The fix was minor and we've created a new release. If you're seeing slow updates, please install this version. We apologize for the problem.

Changes

• Product searches on Amazon.com have been added and you can monitor items for price drops. All Amazon sites (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK and the US) are supported.
  
  Since Amazon has several offerings per item from different sellers and with different prices and item conditions, this information is consolidated into a summary result like so:
  
  

• Prospector's new listing detection has been expanded to provide change detection for Amazon results. You can pick item conditions that you want monitored and if there are price drops for these conditions, the item will be flagged. You'll then be able to see it along with new listings, or if you've set up email notification, you'll be notified of the change through email. There is more information on the help page.

• As with other items, you'll be able to add Amazon items to the watch list, and do things like add notes and highlighting.

• The Tools menu / Prospector Options / Amazon tab lets you configure defaults for Amazon. These settings will apply to new Amazon searches that you create as well as to the Amazon searches that you do through the Quick Search toolbar.

• The text-based XML importer and exporter handles Amazon searches.

• Thumbnail pictures for Half and Amazon items are shown.

• The set of search tree icons now include:
  
  

• When individual Searches or Search Groups are updated, the memos are now shown with the results. (Thanks to Sue S.)

• Program startup speed has been improved considerably. All the improvements will kick in and be most noticeable from the second time you start v8 and thereafter.

• Search speed has been improved.

• V8 is a highly recommended update!

Changes

• Half.com searches have been changed to use eBay's developer interface. They are much faster and won't be prone to breakage from eBay website changes from here forward. You can now specify ISBN, EAN, and UPC ids.

Changes

• Bookmark Pages are new. They let you save a web address and dedicate a tabbed browser page to it.
  
  While they can be used to save searches on eBay that you've set up exactly as you'd like, they can also be used for searches on other websites including places like Craig's List. An update of a bookmark page would then reload the page and let you see the latest results. There is online documentation here.
  
  Favorite Searches from My eBay are now imported into bookmark pages.
  
  Captured Searches are no longer recommended because of eBay changes that don't have easy workarounds. Please use Standard Searches or Bookmark Pages instead.

• Bid status has been fixed following eBay's anonymization of high bidders.
  
  
• If you bid on an auction that has a Buy It Now option as well, a check is now made to see that you don't bid more than the BIN price as eBay will block the bid.

Changes

• eBay made changes that broke Captured Searches.
  Dec 20 update - please use v7.

Changes

• A new method to add searches to the Quick Search Toolbar has been added. If a website has well structured addresses, you can specify a template directly regardless of whether or not the website provides a search engine. The online documentation has more on this feature.
• Captured Searches have been updated to work with both eBay's current search and Finding 2.0 / New Search Experience. We still recommend that you avoid Captured Searches as the other search alternatives are much better and faster.
• The Import / Export Search Tree to XML now includes the "retrieval sort order" option.

Changes

• Thumbnails can now be switched between small, medium and large.
• Seller and shipping information is now always retrieved for items added to the watch list by any means.
• Fixed a bug where the last newly listed item for a search may be detected as new again when the search is replayed, i.e. there was an overlap.
• Seller feedback scores and percentages are now synchronized across multiple items.
• Reviewed display and updating code with improvements made.

Changes

• You can now add any web page (not just eBay listings) to the Watch List. Just as with eBay listings, you'll be able to add notes and highlighting. These entries will be placed at the bottom of the Open page and in the order that you added them. You might find this feature useful for:
  • Tagging interesting items while comparison shopping.
  • Keeping lists of things that you're looking for on eBay.
  • Linking to reference pages such as catalog or price lists.
• The archiver can now create MHT archives for any page, not just eBay listings.
• For the option of opening result listings in a dedicated secondary browser (introduced in v6.3), holding down the Alt key while clicking will toggle your choice of the default browser. For example, if you have this option set with the Prospector Browser as the default, holding down the Alt key when a result link is clicked would use IE as the secondary browser. (This applies only when a new secondary browser is created, so if you'd like to switch, close the existing secondary browser before doing this).

Changes

• Seller Blocker redone with significantly better performance. You can now exclude up to 100 sellers, and it would apply to all your Standard and Product ID searches with almost no penalty in performance.
• eBay Plus gallery images are now picked up and shown with search results.
• The location and size of new browser windows are now saved and restored.
• There's a new option in Prospector Options that let's you open result listings in a dedicated secondary browser. You may find this useful if you have a lot of screen real estate such as with a multiple-monitor setup. (Thanks to Lee D. for the suggestion).
• A new option in Prospector Options lets you choose between Internet Explorer and the Prospector Browser for new windows. Choosing IE gives you all the toolbars you've installed but it doesn't preserve signed-in state if the document is sign-in protected. The Prospector Browser doesn't have toolbars (yet) but it preserves sign-in state.

Changes

• Reserve Met At has been fixed.
• Fixed a bug where an eBay link may open to half.com. (Thanks to Andy W. and Ron C.)
• New browser windows now retain the logged-in state for any website.
• The price restriction boxes for the page, group, and various searches have been changed to use a blank instead of zero for no restriction.
• The search restrictions now allow searching for listings with no bids.

Changes

• We found inconsistent information returned by two eBay systems that Prospector is using in the v6.1 that was released on May 18. This gave incorrect Reserve Met At information as a result, and we're re-releasing v6.1 with this feature disabled. This is unfortunate as the performance increase is significant. If we find some work-around or if eBay fixes this, we'll reintroduce Reserve Met At in a future update.
• Added a site-override feature to Standard and ProductId searches. You can now specify an eBay site that's different from your default as the search target. You would do this with the new Search Site drop-down selector on the Regional tab. With this, you can group Standard Searches with a different sites for wider coverage.
• Watch List, Bid List and individual item updates have been sped up.
• Database code error handling code has been improved.

5/22 update - We've fixed Reserve Met At and it'll be in the next version.

Changes

• Shipping calculation improvements. Faster + it will warn you if it looks like the seller won't ship to your location.
• Vista installs can now be done without having to use Run As Administrator.