Arcen Games

Other => Website Support => : Draco18s November 24, 2015, 09:51:24 PM

: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s November 24, 2015, 09:51:24 PM
Apparently its default now?  My forum settings has the "Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default" option unchecked.
I'm sorry, but I'm not a fan. :\
The two forums I use frequently that already had a rich text editor have all kinds of problems with it.  I'd much rather use BBCode.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Aklyon November 24, 2015, 11:42:52 PM
Second this.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: ptarth November 24, 2015, 11:59:08 PM
third.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Pumpkin November 25, 2015, 02:36:18 AM
Fourk.
Er... +1.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Malkiel November 25, 2015, 07:28:44 AM
fifth
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 November 25, 2015, 02:07:27 PM
Hmm.  Anyone actually a fan of this? ;)
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Aklyon November 25, 2015, 03:01:09 PM
Elsewhere, maybe? Its never worked for me on forums though.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Coppermantis November 25, 2015, 04:15:56 PM
Hmm.  Anyone actually a fan of this? ;)

I actually like it, and WYSIWYG editors in general, but I appear to be in the minority on this. 
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s November 26, 2015, 12:02:59 AM
Hmm.  Anyone actually a fan of this? ;)

Its fine as an option, but I really dislike them on forums for some reason.  Like, intensely seethe at.  So yes, I want to turn it off.

Minecraft forum's WYSIWIG is buggy as all getout (and they use a third party tool and fixes are slow in coming).

Coping
and pasting text inserts random line breaks for no
apparent reason, for instance.  It has trouble with
embedded youtube videos, the forums support--
but can't correctly display--spoiler tags.  The first
problem is that the WYSIWYG editor can't
collapse them, the second problem is that nested
spoiler tags (while they do nest!) aren't rendered
in a way that you can tell where a nested spoiler
begins and ends once its opened.

Multiple quotes in the same post frequently break (closing [/quote] tags are incorrectly stripped). Nested lists break (see next issue).  Random, unnecessary paragraph tags are inserted (and every edit/save action inserts new ones).  Switching to BBcode mode makes the editor lag like CRAZY.  No really, it would read the keyboard input buffer slower and slower the longer the post was.  This post would have already been under 1 keystroke / second.  Trying to break a quote into multiple quote boxes works sometimes (right now there's an issue where you have to insert 2 paragraph breaks for it to understand what you want it to do, which leaves a line break at the top of the second, and backspacing it off deletes the whole next paragraph.

The other forum that uses a WYSIWYG that I have to suffer through decided to build their own forum from the ground up, for no reason, including their own WYSIWYG editor, which has limited functionality, and some features are just broken (there's @user support, for instance, but typing an [email protected] address makes it [email protected] user-mention instead, and even then sometimes it goes and shows @userid-12345 instead of the user name...or outright doesn't even notify the user).  Though, my biggest problem with that forum is that pagination is AJAXed.  They had to add url-redirect support so you could actually use the browser history meaningfully when navigating multiple pages of a thread.  But this also means that following a notification or other URL that causes the correct page of a thread to load means you can't just alt-left (or in my case, mouse-thumb-button-2) to go back a page, because there's now an extra redirect in the browser history.  There was also a brief period where you couldn't stay logged in, a different period where you would...as long as you didn't ctrl-click or middle-click a link to open a forum page in a new tab (same tab stayed logged in, new tab logged you out).  "Report post/thread to moderator" is a feature that was promised as "coming soon" about 9 months ago.  As I have a bookmark to their internal bug tracker (due to the sheer number of bugs I was reporting, I was given knowledge of the internal issue tracker) I once saw a report that "unmarking a user as a troll makes them a global moderator" (like...how do you screw that up that badly?)  Then there's the problem that the forums have a dark background and the editor is white (like here!) and so correctly chosing colors is difficult.  Of course...over there links have a style that causes them to be white when you mouse-over them.  Which includes when you're editing in the editor. :|  (Edit: we don't have a smiley selector? Do we not have a :| face?)

Oh, and the AJAX thing?  Yeah, it stores results as cookie data / local storage.  The entire HTML content of the page load.  And it keeps it forever.  I once broke the forums because I had 8+ friggin megs of stored pages which were all out of date (and the browser wouldn't allow more to be saved, so the pages would simply fail to load at all).  Additionally, I found that user personal information was included in that data (i.e. email addresses of users, which were not publicly visible on their profiles).  Fortunately that was fixed right quick.

So yeah.
Rich text editors have their place, but I really, truly, dislike them for forum posting.  I don't begrudge those that do like them, but I want the option to turn it off and leave it off.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Mánagarmr November 26, 2015, 03:01:55 AM
My biggest problem with WYSIWYG editors is when you try to edit things and all hell breaks loose and you get font size changes, color changes and headlines exploding all over the place. For just general posting it's usually fine.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Cyborg November 26, 2015, 06:46:39 PM
I can't seem to write a post where newlines are respected. Please turn this off.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: The Hunter November 29, 2015, 09:58:51 PM
+1, Broke my post a couple of times(*cough*quote pyramid city*cough*) where i had to re-edit...
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 November 29, 2015, 10:53:51 PM
I am having trouble uninstalling this, go figure.  But we're working on it. :/
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Dominus Arbitrationis November 30, 2015, 01:09:02 AM
Alright, uninstalled it!
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Pumpkin November 30, 2015, 02:40:42 AM
Hem. Maybe a deep uninstalling is a bit too much. There are people out there that liked it (I think). There were an option in the profile settings to disable it but it didn't work. Maybe fixing the disable button would have fixed the problem.

Well, now it's uninstalled, I guess it would be pointless to reinstall it.

Thank you, anyway.
It's much more familiar like this.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Shrugging Khan November 30, 2015, 03:13:40 AM
It was really hard to handle quotes. That's my main complaint, I guess. That, and I generally don't like WYSIWYG because I have to use them at work and that blows.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Mánagarmr November 30, 2015, 03:23:38 AM
It's probably alright as an option for those who like it, but the problem was indeed that the setting was ignored.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 November 30, 2015, 08:42:36 AM
What I really want, personally, is some better way to handle quotes.  That's why I added that.  In gmail when I'm responding to folks it is incredibly fast to just click into a quote, hit enter, and then I'm immediately writing my own response.  But on the forums it's a bunch of stupid cutting and pasting, blah.  I hate that.  Beyond that, I have no problems using the forums in the format they are, but it's time consuming responding to folks using quotes in my reply when I'm responding point by point or to dozens of people at once.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s November 30, 2015, 03:56:31 PM
Yeah, I know what you mean. We need multi-quote.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 November 30, 2015, 08:01:10 PM
Is there a plugin for that?
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s November 30, 2015, 10:15:08 PM
Is there a plugin for that?

Its SMF, there's plugins for everything. ;D
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/?mod=2360

I do notice now, though, that if I scroll down on the "make a post" page that the thread summary has "insert quote" buttons.  I've never used it though.

Ah, THIS (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2086) might be what you want more than anything.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 December 01, 2015, 01:05:54 AM
Ah, THIS might be what you want more than anything.

Ha!!!  This does indeed seem to be what I want.

Let's test:

I do notice now, though, that if I scroll down on the "make a post" page that the thread summary has "insert quote" buttons.  I've never used it though.

I haven't seen that, but the new "Quote (selected)" works suuuuper well.  This will save me so many hours of time over the course of any given year, heh.  :D

edit: Amidst all that, I forgot to say: thanks!
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Pumpkin December 01, 2015, 04:16:48 AM
Well done! This solution is indeed much better than the WYSIWYG editor and very efficient! Thank you Draco and Chris!
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Mánagarmr December 01, 2015, 04:46:56 AM
This is like the best ever. Thanks!
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 December 01, 2015, 09:29:18 AM
Sweet! :)
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s December 01, 2015, 11:24:39 AM
You're welcome!

And for reference, all I did was search "SMF quote" in Google which found me the multiquote (and the mod repository).  Searching "quote" there found me the quote(selected) very quickly.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 December 01, 2015, 11:27:34 AM
I went about it wrong, clearly -- I was looking for WYSIWYG, assuming the two were related.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: The Hunter December 01, 2015, 02:59:28 PM
Good ol' post editor, so much better! Thanks!  :D
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: TheVampire100 December 01, 2015, 03:01:11 PM
The background color and the font style irritated me the most. I'm a guy who prefers the stuff he is used to and when soemthing suddenly changes I mostly dislike it first.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s December 01, 2015, 03:37:20 PM
I went about it wrong, clearly -- I was looking for WYSIWYG, assuming the two were related.

Ahhh, I see!
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: x4000 December 02, 2015, 09:05:09 AM
The background color and the font style irritated me the most. I'm a guy who prefers the stuff he is used to and when soemthing suddenly changes I mostly dislike it first.

I felt the same way about that bit, honestly, heh.
: Re: WYSIWYG Editor
: Draco18s December 02, 2015, 12:45:03 PM
I hate change as much as the next guy.  ;)
Though I can recognize when something has value in being altered. WYSIWYG editors have frequently on the other hand haven't been what they say on the tin. For example, being the wrong font face and text color.