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Post By
Anime Jason 
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Location: Here
Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
Posts: 2,834
In Reply To
ag

Subj: So I've heard.  But here's why it's the way it is...
Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 at 01:34:09 am EDT (Viewed 388 times)
Reply Subj: Jason! I figured why I hate the new subject box!
Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 at 10:54:04 pm EDT

Previous Post


1st of all, before I whine like a nerdboy, I do want to say you've done a really good job with everything. Please don't take my problem as a bad thing. I do apriciate you.

Now, when I do Caption the Pic I post it at the same exact time in three places. 1) Here at the PV, where Html is wonderfully allowed and used. 2) the Raving Toy Maniac site, where html is outlawed. 3)My blog.

I have a word document with all the names of everyone who has captioned in the last year, the typical text I use (my thank yous, my intro to the next pic), the html codes and the links to the other sites where CTP is posted.

I paste the entire doc in the PV Message box. Then I cut the html loaded subject from the message and paste it in our subject line. At the time it's all code with the text CAPTION THE PIC... inside. In the PV subject line I type the title for this week's caption.

Ok, all of that works fine with your new adjustments. I go up and down with the arrows and it's all there, very pretty. I edit the message to list only those who captioned last week and I can copy anything from the message box into the message box of Raving Toy Maniac. I exclude all html so the RTM dosnt swear at me and forbid the post. That all works like normal.

The next step would be where I go into the PV subject line and only select the title "CAPTION THE PIC... CAPTION TITLE (sometimes a long title)". Then I paste it to the RTM title.

The new subject line is hard now. It frustrates me becuase with the new up and down, I can't get a hold of just the title. I wind up getting part or all of the html codes, too.

So I get frustrated with this and find myself thinking "less is more" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I guess, since it defaults my code I don't need the html in the PV subject box anymore. I guess I could paste just the title in the PV subject line and not have to try and grab text from two lines. So I guess I need to alter my way of operations to allow more new tricks.

I'm just wondering how long before "home" is so decorated that it's no longer "home".


The original version had the Subject and Name entries switching from the standard Input type entry to Rich Text and back.  The problem was when text is written to an Input type entry is has to be "encoded" so special characters like HTML contains don't spill over.

That problem is easy to solve going from the board software to the form.  Switching from the old-style Input areas to Rich Text worked just fine.  The board software has no problem writing the encoded text the Input areas need.

But switching from Rich Text back to plain Input areas was a problem for Internet Explorer.  The Javascript used to encode the Input area text the same way as the board software does it (so the data returned when you post the message is recognized) works in every browser except Internet Explorer.  IE just ignores that stuff and what happens is the Input areas show up empty.

To get around that I had to switch the text input areas from Input to Textarea, because Textarea can handle the text without any encoding.

So therefore right now, until I find a fix for that particular Javascript bug in IE there are only a few choices:

1.  Keep the Textarea blanks until the problem has a fix.

2.  Make it so you can only switch from the old-style form to Rich Text ONCE, irreversibly (that would surely generate a lot of complaints).

3.  Eliminate Rich Text for Internet Explorer.  Which would suck for a lot of people since IE is still the world's most popular browser and some people might want to use Rich Text.

4.  Eliminate Rich Text altogether from the board software.  That would suck for even more people since a lot of people like it.  At least I think they do.  

I do make an effort to make the board as backward compatible and recognizable as possible.  Sometimes it doesn't work perfectly - and there will always be people who say "put it back the way it was" if the board is even slightly different from the day it started.  

I've resisted making the board more dependent on things like Javascript and Ajax because those would be more drastic changes.  There's a whole list of features I passed on adding because they would change things too much and there was no way to maintain the basics.  Rich Text, in fact, was back-burnered many times simply because I couldn't make it integrate as well as it does now without giving up too much.

That said, as soon as I figure out how to fix that IE problem the old Input blanks will make a return.  There are too many problems, ironically, with Textareas in IE to leave it that way permanently if I can avoid it.