The reply/topic layout is confusing

[Jon the VGNerd 842]

While I appreciate the makeover in terms of posts, I'm not really accommodated to the new layout when it comes to making posts or posting replies, as its pretty tedious in making basic HTMLs such as spoiler, images and videos as they often come out wrong and don't appear at all. If anyone can help me on how to do these again would be appreciated for me to get used to it, even though I liked the previous layout better due to it being easy to use in my opinion.

[Jeric 46,834]

The best person to walk you through using the text editor is almost certainly @Rikifive. Honestly it might be a decent idea for staff to see if he is up to working on some sort of visual guide to using MLPF. 

[Rikifive 23,472]

6 hours ago, Jeric said:

The best person to walk you through using the text editor is almost certainly @Rikifive.

Not sure how did I get there, but I feel honored. 

 

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Yeah, it may be confusing. It took me less than a week to bump into several bugs and inconveniences in the text editor after the v4 upgrade. I've literally accidentally broke some of my posts (with project presentations and such) back then, having to spend hours on fixing these, due to amount of formatting they had. How these were breaking is a mystery - I have no idea why the contents were moved all over the place- middle part of the post appearing at the end, the ending somewhere in the middle in a random spoiler... pure magic, that was hard to fix.

My first tip is to type BBCodes manually only when it's absolutely necessary. If you got used to manually typing BBCodes, such as img, spoiler etc.. then the bad news are, that from now on you should start getting used to the buttons in the editor, especially the spoiler one with the eye icon. This text editor is more automatic - literally WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get), you can't even view the (raw) BBCode format anymore- you just have what you see - so it's highly preferred to have the special boxes and all the formatting displayed/visible in the editor before posting it, rather than using raw code and making it process when posting. Most of the BBCodes will do their job correctly, but the spoiler one is just dangerous, as it was (and still is?) the one causing most of the mess. I'm not sure if that was fixed in next updates, as I didn't dare to find that out, but I still advise to use the button to create the spoiler box in the editor, rather than making it convert the code into these boxes when posting.

Oh- and you've mentioned HTML - it's still better to use the buttons. What's more, normal members aren't allowed to put HTML in the editor, due to security reasons. Not sure about other groups, but I suspect it is left only for admins-- or just disabled for everybody.

<strong>not working *is sad*</strong>
(you could still use the console *cough* *cough*, but it still limits you from posting contents you'd normally not be able to post)
Such strong (- via HTML)

 

There are many things to tell about the text editor (starting from basics, through tips and bugs, to more advanced usage) and I suppose you don't want to get a giant wall of text explaining how to make posts.  ~So I think it would be better to know what exactly you'd like to know.  Unless you actually want to get a wall of text mentioning common functions and such..  

Edited January 20, 2018 by Rikifive

[Jon the VGNerd 842]

Well for starters @Rikifive, would like to know how to add spoilers, images and videos without accidentally messing things up. I'll be honest, its been five years since I've been on MLPForums and the new changes threw me off-guard. 

[Rikifive 23,472]

Okie dokie!

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--- SPOILERS ---

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Creating Spoilers

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As I've mentioned before, the most efficient way to insert a spoiler is to use the button with eye icon from the tool-bar at the top of the editor.

Clicking this icon will insert a spoiler box into your post at the current position of your text cursor (the blinking vertical line in the editor, just to make it clear  ).
Now you can type and/or paste the contents you want to have inside the spoiler, nothing fancy.  

Spoilers within spoilers also are possible by using that button, simply click the button while having the text cursor inside the spoiler. For example, double click it to create a spoiler with a spoiler inside.

You can also create a spoiler using BBCode:

[spoiler]This will be in the spoiler.
That too.
Yeah....[/spoiler]

This will work in a small scale, but weird things happen when the post gets big. Generally I do not recommend using BBCode tags when wanting to make spoilers.

Due to more automatic editor as of v.4 Upgrade and its behavior, it's best to initialize the spoiler boxes while editing (using the eye icon), than forcing the software to convert the code and create these on then fly when posting.

 

Tips and Bugs

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 If you'll hover your cursor over a spoiler, you'll notice arrows in the upper left corner of the spoiler.

You can click&drag that to move spoilers around. It is possible to move these in/out -to/of other spoiler, but be careful, as they sometimes get eaten along with their contents when moving spoilers within spoilers. If that will happen, you can try to undo the operation, by clicking the left arrow in the tool-bar.

Spoiler

You can of course also use CTRL+Z to undo, but very rarely it tends to glitch and go back by maaaaaany steps removing too much. Redo (either the right arrow icon or CTRL+Y key combination) tends to break as well when that happens, so there's no mercy.  I'm not sure about the toolbar buttons though. I always use key shortcuts and I know from my experience, that these are capable of rarely glitching the text-editor, though it usually happens when the post gets relatively long.

 

 When moving spoilers around (it tends to happen randomly as well), it is possible to move these to the very bottom or the very top, so that you can't type above or below them, due to lack of space.

Spoiler

The only solution is to drag the spoiler up/down a little, so that you'll have at least one free line. This sounds obvious, but it can be extremely frustrating for users, who aren't aware of that.

 

 A safe way to remove the spoilers along with their contents is not highlighting them, but clicking their top and hitting delete key. Backspace will also work, but I prefer 'delete'.

Spoiler

 

 Selecting special boxes (such as spoilers) may be a hassle.
Let's say, that you'd have some text with a spoiler in the middle. Now you want to select it all in order to copy&paste it somewhere else. If you'll start highlighting from the top, everything will work nicely. However, if you'll be highlighting from the bottom, your selection will get stuck once you'll hover over the spoiler:

Spoiler

A solution is to go around these boxes when highlighting. Just move your cursor to the left, then drag the selection up.

 

 

I know most of that is most likely not what you'd like to know, but it may save you from potential frustration.  Not sure what else I could add, so feel free to poke me when having other questions.

 

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--- IMAGES ---

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Adding Images

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All you have to do is to follow the damn train, CJ paste the link to the image.  It will be automatically replaced by the image after few seconds.
Make sure, that the URL is properly formatted like this:

https://i.imgur.com/iSPKxTd.png

There may be images, that will have random letters and numbers at the end of the link. These may not work properly.
 

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Aaaah undo broke already and it ate so much of my content. And yup- redo is unavailable. RIP 
*sigh*, let's type that all again......

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Embedding Links Into Images

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You can put links into your images (make clickable images, that is), by double clicking the image while in the editor. This will open a window with image settings:

Spoiler

Paste the link into Link URL box to redirect users there when clicking the image.
You can also adjust the display size there, which is convenient when putting large images, that you'd like to shrink a little on the fly.

 

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--- VIDEOS ---

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Embedding Videos Into Your Posts

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There's the same procedure. Just paste the link to the video directly into the editor.  It shouldn't mess up anything as long as your text cursor is in the right position. - the video and images will appear in the place, where you'll paste their links.

 

 

 

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Okay, that's all I think. I probably went too much into the details, but it's really worth knowing how to deal with various bugs and such. Hopefully that helps!

If you'd have more questions, feel free to poke me.  

 

Edited February 12, 2018 by Rikifive

[PiratePony 8,473]

Riki's response should be pinned somewhere. Very thorough!