Disable this forum's WYSIWYG editor

[ManIkWeet]

I hate the editor on this forum so much:

Quoting blocks are broken, making splitting quotes incredibly difficult...

The editor managed to sync across multiple browser tabs and multiple threads, I couldn't delete it and had to restart my browser.

Many buttons are invisible on smaller resolutions

The pasting with formatting is generally stupid

Details in quoting blocks can't be edited (who you quoted, what time etc)

 

TLDR: I want to be able to use code blocks, not this broken "you get exactly what you see" crap, how to get that?

[Geeb_]

6 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

I hate the editor on this forum so much:

Quoting blocks are broken, making splitting quotes incredibly difficult...

The editor managed to sync across multiple browser tabs and multiple threads, I couldn't delete it and had to restart my browser.

Many buttons are invisible on smaller resolutions

The pasting with formatting is generally stupid

Details in quoting blocks can't be edited (who you quoted, what time etc)

 

TLDR: I want to be able to use code blocks, not this broken "you get exactly what you see" crap, how to get that?

I think the answer to a bad what you see is what you get is to just improve it, look at TekSyndicate for example, there system is excellent. Deleting it is not viable as there are no alternatives.

[zMeul]

don't worry, it won't be fixed

I complained about the new let's call it "editor" since day 1 - still waiting

 

the IPS people said it's more streamlined and the "old way" was cumbersome and they don't think people want it - fuck that shit

[theanimun]

I too wish for the BBCode format with the ease of use and whatnot

[quote="username"] [/quote]

Tell me this isn't easier than trying to do the editors quoting

Quote

I think the answer to a bad what you see is what you get is to just improve it, look at TekSyndicate for example, there system is excellent. Deleting it is not viable as there are no alternatives.

@Geeb_ BBCode is much easier to create quote blocks, along with stating who posted it

[ShadowCaptain]

I prefer it this way, as most of us find it easier 

[theanimun]

2 minutes ago, AlexTheRose said:

NodeBB is nice, but good luck convincing the body of staff (or should I say, the forum admins) to move off of IPB.

last time I used IPB it used BBCode to do its formatting and whatnot

[theanimun]

1 minute ago, AlexTheRose said:

IPB still uses BBCode, it’s just forcefully hidden from everyone. Blame the devs for being holier-than-thou.

 

In all honesty BBCode is far too verbose. Markdown is much better suited for modern forums.

then shouldn't I be able to use it if I know it? even if not visually selectable?

[theanimun]

Then that's what needs to be fixed, or at the very least give the option to see the source code for the text inside the text editor

TL:DR ive been doing some testing of the BBCode for the forum, and using the format I showed above, you cannot show who posted the text outside of the pre included quote button, which sucks because if you wanna quote someone from another topic, your outta luck on that front, but you can forcefully use BBCode

[LAwLz]

I've complained about this too. The update broke a lot of my posts and it was incredibly painful to fix them in the WYSIWYG editor. The response was that it would most likely not be fixed.

[ManIkWeet]

It doesn't have to be deleted completely, it's doing a somewhat decent job. It's just that it lacks so many features (most notably quoting) that it'd be nice to have a toggle for BBCode.

 

Sadly, apparently the developers on this forum think otherwise...

 

I wonder if I could write my own plugin... Though this would probably take a lot of time

 

 

Quote

You're a terrible editor...

Seriously!

I tried editing the html in Google Chrome, seems to be effective...

 

Edit: semi-effective... meh

 

 

[theanimun]

you can do nested quoting btw, just if its manual nested quoting don't expect it to show who posted, unless you use the posts quoting options

[LogicalDrm]

2 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

NodeBB is nice, but good luck convincing the body of staff (or should I say, the forum admins) to move off of IPB.

 

At the moment I am the backend developer for a radio news syndicate, and we’ll be integrating NodeBB into the site. It’s quite lovely.

 

Its mostly about money and time. Mods who are resposible of forum have used countless hours to upgrade from IPB3 to 4. LMG has spend some serious $$$ to pay for this suite. And its addons. If you could deliver new system as ready to use... might be possible. Sadly you are too new to remember move from vBulletin to IPB3.

 

2 hours ago, theanimun said:

Then that's what needs to be fixed, or at the very least give the option to see the source code for the text inside the text editor

TL:DR ive been doing some testing of the BBCode for the forum, and using the format I showed above, you cannot show who posted the text outside of the pre included quote button, which sucks because if you wanna quote someone from another topic, your outta luck on that front, but you can forcefully use BBCode

 

I see you don't get concept behind using such stupid acronyms as TL:DR.

 

2 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

It doesn't have to be deleted completely, it's doing a somewhat decent job. It's just that it lacks so many features (most notably quoting) that it'd be nice to have a toggle for BBCode.

Whats you issues with quoting? You can copy and paste them, move them within post, break them in parts etc.

[ManIkWeet]

21 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Whats you issues with quoting? You can copy and paste them, move them within post, break them in parts etc.

 

For example: quote a post, now try to insert text before the quote... (used as a general reply to the thread, then a quote and then a reply to said quote)

Similarly, if there is no new line behind a quote block, you can't get one by pressing your enter key... you have to insert the new line before the quote block and then drag the quote block up...

Similarly, you can't use backspace to remove a blank line right below your quote block.

 

I can go on, and on, and on, and on, ...

[LogicalDrm]

Eh... text before quote.

1 minute ago, ManIkWeet said:

For example: quote a post, now try to insert text before the quote... (used as a general reply to the thread, then a quote and then a reply to said quote)

Text after quote.

1 minute ago, ManIkWeet said:

Similarly, if there is no new line behind a quote block, you can't get one by pressing your enter key... you have to insert the new line before the quote block and then drag the quote block up...

You can click with cursor quote right side of quote box. It sets invisible cursor place and enter there will result as new line under quote.

1 minute ago, ManIkWeet said:

Similarly, you can't use backspace to remove a blank line right below your quote block.

This is true though I haven't noticed is as issue.

1 minute ago, ManIkWeet said:

I can go on, and on, and on, and on, ...

[ManIkWeet]

49 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

You can click with cursor quote right side of quote box. It sets invisible cursor place and enter there will result as new line under quote.

When I click on the right side of a quote box, the quote box gets a highlight but I can't get a new line below it through my enter key. Unless there is one already there of course.

 

That might be a browser difference...

 

Also I wonder how you made up that post, and how long it took you?

[LogicalDrm]

5 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

When I click on the right side of a quote box, the quote box gets a highlight but I can't get a new line below it through my enter key. Unless there is one already there of course.

 

That might be a browser difference...

 

Also I wonder how you made up that post, and how long it took you?

Not that long. And click outside of quote box. Like de-selecting it. I'm on Firefox, not sure if thats a thing on Chrome or others. Breaking quote in parts is done with double-enter at line where you want it to break. It has little bug where it sometimes doesn't work. And major bug where text after break is inverted.

[colonel_mortis]

6 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

Quoting blocks are broken, making splitting quotes incredibly difficult...

To split a quote, just move the caret to the end of the line, then press enter twice. The quote will be split in half, and both will have the citation data.

6 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

The editor managed to sync across multiple browser tabs and multiple threads, I couldn't delete it and had to restart my browser.

It should only change the content when you refresh the page, but the whole autobackup system does need some work. The devs have marked my suggested improvements to it as planned, but from my experience that doesn't mean much.

6 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

Many buttons are invisible on smaller resolutions

That is intentional so that the toolbar doesn't take up too much space on small screens. What button are you particularly missing, and on what device do you want it?

6 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

The pasting with formatting is generally stupid

I agree, but the options that we get are "paste with formatting and show the banner to remove" or "don't allow any formatting to be pasted at all (including bullet points, bold sections, etc)". The editor itself supports a much better mode that is a middle ground between the two, but for some reason the devs have chosen not to use it.

6 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

Details in quoting blocks can't be edited (who you quoted, what time etc)

I can't think of many reasons to want to edit it (other than to make it match a post, in which case just select the text in the post and click "quote this"), but the main reason that it's not supported is that there is a lot of metadata with the quotes that is not displayed, and the title is then built from that metadata - for the quotes of your post, the metadata is

data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic" data-ipsquote-contentcommentid="8222480" data-ipsquote-contentid="637235" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-timestamp="1470216468" data-ipsquote-userid="59574" data-ipsquote-username="ManIkWeet"

That's not something that we can reasonably present in a user interface to the user.

6 hours ago, Geeb_ said:

I think the answer to a bad what you see is what you get is to just improve it, look at TekSyndicate for example, there system is excellent. Deleting it is not viable as there are no alternatives.

Unless I'm missing something, Tek Syndicate's editor is a markdown editor, not WYSIWYG.

6 hours ago, theanimun said:

I too wish for the BBCode format with the ease of use and whatnot

[quote="username"] [/quote]

Tell me this isn't easier than trying to do the editors quoting

That wouldn't have all the metadata though, and for a lot of users that isn't easier - they would much prefer to just click the quote button.

6 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

NodeBB is nice, but good luck convincing the body of staff (or should I say, the forum admins) to move off of IPB.

 

At the moment I am the backend developer for a radio news syndicate, and we’ll be integrating NodeBB into the site. It’s quite lovely.

At this stage, it would not make sense for us to switch to a different software, especially as pretty much all the complaints that people have about IPS are to do with the editor, and not the software itself.

6 hours ago, theanimun said:

then shouldn't I be able to use it if I know it? even if not visually selectable?

You can still type BBCode, but once it's submitted it will be parsed into HTML, and can't be converted back to BBCode to edit again. There are also a few fairly minor bugs with BBCode parsing.

6 hours ago, theanimun said:

Then that's what needs to be fixed, or at the very least give the option to see the source code for the text inside the text editor

TL:DR ive been doing some testing of the BBCode for the forum, and using the format I showed above, you cannot show who posted the text outside of the pre included quote button, which sucks because if you wanna quote someone from another topic, your outta luck on that front, but you can forcefully use BBCode

I would love to have a BBCode, markdown, etc editor that people can use if they want, but it's just not possible (and trust me, I tried).

If you want to quote someone from another topic, you have a few options. If you just click quote on their post, you can then click the quote header to select it, and copy it to the new topic. If you've not started writing the post, you can instead use the + button to multiquote instead - that should work across topics. Alternatively, if you only want to reference the post, you could copy the permalink to the post (use the share button for example) and paste it in the new topic, and it will embed with a preview.

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I've complained about this too. The update broke a lot of my posts and it was incredibly painful to fix them in the WYSIWYG editor. The response was that it would most likely not be fixed.

Quite a bit of that was because of a bug with the parser that was run during the upgrade, which irreversibly mangled some posts, if I recall correctly.

5 hours ago, theanimun said:

you can do nested quoting btw, just if its manual nested quoting don't expect it to show who posted, unless you use the posts quoting options

Out of interest, why do you want nested quoting?

3 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

but since it seems @colonel_mortis likes working with PHP more than Node or Ruby I doubt something modern like NodeBB would be in the cards anyway

I don't like PHP, and would prefer to use Node (though I now have experience with PHP as well as with vanilla JS, and there are other languages that I think would be better still), though I don't think it is particularly well suited to a forum (though that is getting off topic). A new forum software would need to have some serious benefits for us to justify the time and effort that would be needed to ensure that the features that people want are still present, and that the upgrade would work smoothly, so there's no way that we're going to switch just because the editor is buggy.

3 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

while I haven’t delved too far into it, it seems that the forum suites made for PHP are quite legacy in and of themselves as well… but out of all of those IPB is best overall. NodeBB would be better but it’s not PHP, so yeah

Having never heard of NodeBB before today, NodeBB may have some advantages, but I expect that it will also be missing quite a few things that people would be annoyed about, particularly on the moderation and administration side. I've not used it though, so I may well be wrong.

3 hours ago, ManIkWeet said:

For example: quote a post, now try to insert text before the quote... (used as a general reply to the thread, then a quote and then a reply to said quote)

Similarly, if there is no new line behind a quote block, you can't get one by pressing your enter key... you have to insert the new line before the quote block and then drag the quote block up...

Similarly, you can't use backspace to remove a blank line right below your quote block.

Your first point is correct, and on the rare occasion that I have experienced it I have been annoyed by it. I would be interested to know what you think an intuitive way to add the new line using the WYSIWYG editor would be, because I don't know how I would expect to enter it. You can work around it by adding a new line below the quote and dragging the quote, but I know that's not ideal.

For the second point, assuming that behind means after, you can get the new line by placing the caret at the end of the quote and pressing enter twice.

For the third point, that is correct, and mildly annoying, but it should rarely be an issue - if there's content after it, which there usually is, use delete or move the caret to the following content then press backspace. If there's not content after it, a blank line at the end of the post, while not ideal, is not really a big deal, and will rarely even be noticed.

 

I agree that the editor needs some work, and have posted numerous bugs and suggestions to the devs regarding it, but I don't think it's as bad as you are making it out to be.

 

[ManIkWeet]

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

To split a quote, just move the caret to the end of the line, then press enter twice. The quote will be split in half, and both will have the citation data.

Not intuitive, but very useful to know! Could've saved me a lot of time...

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

It should only change the content when you refresh the page, but the whole autobackup system does need some work. The devs have marked my suggested improvements to it as planned, but from my experience that doesn't mean much.

Thing is, I can't see a situation where it would be useful to have it sync across multiple tabs... Only when you (accidentally) refresh the page.

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

That is intentional so that the toolbar doesn't take up too much space on small screens. What button are you particularly missing, and on what device do you want it?

The issue isn't the button missing, the issue is not being able to get the button back. A simple hamburger/folding menu at the right with the remaining buttons would help an infinite amount!

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I agree, but the options that we get are "paste with formatting and show the banner to remove" or "don't allow any formatting to be pasted at all (including bullet points, bold sections, etc)". The editor itself supports a much better mode that is a middle ground between the two, but for some reason the devs have chosen not to use it.

That's quite silly. I guess it isn't possible to detect a paste and automatically apply the middle-ground with some fancy Javascript is it?

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I can't think of many reasons to want to edit it (other than to make it match a post, in which case just select the text in the post and click "quote this"), but the main reason that it's not supported is that there is a lot of metadata with the quotes that is not displayed, and the title is then built from that metadata - for the quotes of your post, the metadata is

data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic" data-ipsquote-contentcommentid="8222480" data-ipsquote-contentid="637235" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-timestamp="1470216468" data-ipsquote-userid="59574" data-ipsquote-username="ManIkWeet"

That's not something that we can reasonably present in a user interface to the user.

The metadata feels like something that isn't really required, but I guess it ties into the notification system in the background, oh well  

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

That wouldn't have all the metadata though, and for a lot of users that isn't easier - they would much prefer to just click the quote button.

Question is, is any of this metadata critical for some functionality? I can think of many reasons to make a custom quote.

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

You can still type BBCode, but once it's submitted it will be parsed into HTML, and can't be converted back to BBCode to edit again. There are also a few fairly minor bugs with BBCode parsing.

I would love to have a BBCode, markdown, etc editor that people can use if they want, but it's just not possible (and trust me, I tried).

Interesting to know that you can use BBCode, just not when editing the message later...

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Your first point is correct, and on the rare occasion that I have experienced it I have been annoyed by it. I would be interested to know what you think an intuitive way to add the new line using the WYSIWYG editor would be, because I don't know how I would expect to enter it. You can work around it by adding a new line below the quote and dragging the quote, but I know that's not ideal.

An intuitive way would be to be able to place the caret in front of the quote block, and then pressing enter to make the quote block move down, making a new line appear at the top.

 

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

For the second point, assuming that behind means after, you can get the new line by placing the caret at the end of the quote and pressing enter twice.

Again, hidden function that's really useful once you know it!

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

For the third point, that is correct, and mildly annoying, but it should rarely be an issue - if there's content after it, which there usually is, use delete or move the caret to the following content then press backspace. If there's not content after it, a blank line at the end of the post, while not ideal, is not really a big deal, and will rarely even be noticed.

It's true that it will rarely be noticed, but it seems to be a common issue when you quote a post with an empty line at the end.

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I agree that the editor needs some work, and have posted numerous bugs and suggestions to the devs regarding it, but I don't think it's as bad as you are making it out to be.

It's not, when you know the tricks! Thanks for that

Also, a big fat ? button for tips/tricks on the editor might be a decent idea!

[Tieox]

Is this why sometimes when writing a post I press enter and a whole line of text just vanishes! if not the paragraph, thank god for ctrl+z for undo.

 

 

[colonel_mortis]

Just now, Kierax said:

Is this why sometimes when writing a post I press enter and a whole line of text just vanishes! if not the paragraph, thank god for ctrl+z for undo.

No, that's a firefox-only bug that should be fixed in the next forum update.

8 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

Not intuitive, but very useful to know! Could've saved me a lot of time...

To me, it does seem intuitive, but you're not the only person to say that it's not. Is there a better shortcut that you think would make more sense for breaking up the quote or moving the caret below the post?

10 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

Thing is, I can't see a situation where it would be useful to have it sync across multiple tabs... Only when you (accidentally) refresh the page.

The idea is that it backs up the editor contents so if you do accidentally refresh the page, it will be recovered. It's not particularly common that you would write two things in the same editor (as viewed by the forum) at the same time though.

11 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

The issue isn't the button missing, the issue is not being able to get the button back. A simple hamburger/folding menu at the right with the remaining buttons would help an infinite amount!

Unfortunately, that isn't something that I can implement, as useful as it would be, though I will suggest it to the devs.

12 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

That's quite silly. I guess it isn't possible to detect a paste and automatically apply the middle-ground with some fancy Javascript is it?

Unfortunately not - the only way it can be changed is by modifying the original source for the default paste controller JS, which would have to be done every update, and is in a file that is tens of thousands of lines long.

14 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

Question is, is any of this metadata critical for some functionality? I can think of many reasons to make a custom quote.

I guess not, but you could make the same argument about having the citation line on the quote, though it is nice to have. Without the metadata the notifications wouldn't work, but aside from that it would probably not make too much difference. I will suggest it to the devs, but I would say that it's fairly unlikely that it will be implemented.

16 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

An intuitive way would be to be able to place the caret in front of the quote block, and then pressing enter to make the quote block move down, making a new line appear at the top.

It's not ideal because it makes it difficult to add a line to the top of a quote, but I suppose that is such an uncommon use case that being able to add a line above the quote is more important. I will pass that on to the devs.

19 minutes ago, ManIkWeet said:

It's true that it will rarely be noticed, but it seems to be a common issue when you quote a post with an empty line at the end.

Yeah, it is fairly common, but the devs have previously expressed a lack of interest in fixing it.

[Tieox]

Erm, I'm on Chrome latest version. @colonel_mortis

[colonel_mortis]

20 minutes ago, Kierax said:

Erm, I'm on Chrome latest version. @colonel_mortis

That's really weird - I have only seen a Firefox only issue that works in the same way.

It's possible that the fix that works for Firefox will also fix it here - that fix should be pushed to the forum in the next update, due in a couple of weeks. Please let me know if you are still experiencing it after then (follow the Forum Information forum for notifications about updates).

[Tieox]

Just now, colonel_mortis said:

That's really weird - I have only seen a Firefox only issue that works in the same way.

It's possible that the fix that works for Firefox will also fix it here - that fix should be pushed to the forum in the next update, due in a couple of weeks. Please let me know if you are still experiencing it after then (follow the Forum Information forum for notifications about updates).

 

Will do. 

[ManIkWeet]

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

To me, it does seem intuitive, but you're not the only person to say that it's not. Is there a better shortcut that you think would make more sense for breaking up the quote or moving the caret below the post?

Nothing comes to mind, other than another button on the toolbar... maybe give the quote button a double purpose (I tried that once), though that would remove nested-quotes...

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

The idea is that it backs up the editor contents so if you do accidentally refresh the page, it will be recovered. It's not particularly common that you would write two things in the same editor (as viewed by the forum) at the same time though.

I only ran into this issue when I was formatting a post containing a billion quotes, so you're right.

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Unfortunately, that isn't something that I can implement, as useful as it would be, though I will suggest it to the devs.

Awesome.

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Unfortunately not - the only way it can be changed is by modifying the original source for the default paste controller JS, which would have to be done every update, and is in a file that is tens of thousands of lines long.

Maybe suggest it to the devs of the original source? Software devs are generally open to suggestions like that  

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I guess not, but you could make the same argument about having the citation line on the quote, though it is nice to have. Without the metadata the notifications wouldn't work, but aside from that it would probably not make too much difference. I will suggest it to the devs, but I would say that it's fairly unlikely that it will be implemented.

We can always try

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

It's not ideal because it makes it difficult to add a line to the top of a quote, but I suppose that is such an uncommon use case that being able to add a line above the quote is more important. I will pass that on to the devs.

I meant that the caret appears before the quote block, not before the text inside the quote block. I don't know it it's possible though.

58 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Yeah, it is fairly common, but the devs have previously expressed a lack of interest in fixing it.

Oh well 

[Curufinwe_wins]

I'm just pissed off that the stupid post editor syncs across multiple tabs and even when you close it it comes back. It's not that big of a deal to delete and fix on a PC, but on a mobile device it's a nightmare.