Commenting, with or without the WYSIWYG editor
What I am going to do here is type a blog post, then enter a bunch of replies to it, because I don't really know exactly how the commenting options work. There are six possible combinations of (plain/html/autoformat) * (wysiwyg on/off), and I suspect that some of those combinations should be avoided, and possibly even disabled
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Let us know what you come up with.
July 9, 2005 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
<p><strong>First paragraph, all in bold using the WYSIWYG ed, </strong></p><p> </p><p>OK, basically what appears to happen is that the WYSIWYG editor adds HTML tags to your text if you click on any of the buttons. So there are two things you don't want to do if you are using the editor: add HTML tags by hand (since you can't see the ones the editor added and thus any conflicts will be invisible), and use the plain text option.</p><p>I could see that the plain text option might be useful for, in preview mode, viewing the tags that the editor added. But that seems like a limited use, and on the downside, you have a lot of broken posts this way. So I would recommend that the combination of plain text formatting and the WYSIWYG editor be disabled, or at least force previewing before allowing the post to be submitted. </p><p>In 'plain text' mode, btw, hard returns aren't even being converted to line breaks; obviously plain text mode is only useful, if at all, for debugging HTML in preview mode. Moral: DO NOT USE PLAIN TEXT MODE. </p><strong />
July 9, 2005 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The easiest way to comment here is to use the editor, with "HTML Formatted" as the option (drop-down menu below textbox). You can embolden or italicize or underline (most of those buttons toggle; you have to click on it again to cancel). But don't add <b>tags</b> of your own, because the editor may (will?) assume that you don't mean those to be tags, but rather want the 's to appear in the text.
single hard return
double hard return: apparently the editor converts [return] into '<p>'. I don't know if this is good default behavior; perhaps one return should convert to '<br>', two should be '<p>'
July 9, 2005 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, let's do bold italic underline strike; probably combos like boldpluastrike work as well.
single line break
double line break; line breaks work the same as with "HTML Formatted" selected. Probably auto format converts hard returns to line breaks when you aren't using the WYSIWYG editor.
List mode, by the way, converts hard returns into bullets/numbers:
or (turn off the list formatting after the return):
July 9, 2005 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
- John
- Paul
- George
- Ringo
That's quite an improvement. I can't think of any reason to use "Auto Format" with the WYSIWYG editor, as an auto-format function is sure to add tags, which, combined with the tags the editor is adding, will surely result in a pungent tag soup.July 9, 2005 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the rawest of the raw. You can put <b>all</b> the <i>tags</i> you <u>want</u>, but all of them will appear just as you typed them. Moreover, you can insert all the returns you want,
(I just hit the return key 5 times before the open paren), but none of them will convert to line breaks since the site is served by an HTTP server and "file type: text/html" appears at the top of everything that comes from it.
So, again, plain text is only for debugging, or preferably not at all. (ok, that's weird, it converted that last line break before 'So'; I don't know why. Unpredictable, another reason not to use).
July 9, 2005 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are used to doing freeform tagging yourself, or if you're using Lynx or are in some other non-Java environment, you can post like this post, with the editor turned off and "HTML Formatted" selected. You can use the bold or italic or underline tags, you can make a list:
- one
- two
- three
Carriage returns are NOT converted to line breaks, either single returns(here) or double returns
(here). Use the "br" and "p" HTML tags (replace the quotes with brackets). If you want returns converted to line breaks, use "Auto Format".
July 9, 2005 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm guessing this mode is mainly for posters that don't need a bunch of HTML formatting, and just want single returns to make line breaks
and double returns to make paragraph breaks.
(after two returns)
(after three returns). That's really weird.
July 9, 2005 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
<a href="http://sports.yahoo.com">Yahoo Sports</a>
July 9, 2005 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I unchecked it, let's see what it does to the URLs:
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.tpmcafe.com
www.tpmcafe.com
July 9, 2005 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.tpmcafe.com
www.tpmcafe.com
ok, links still work
July 9, 2005 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink