Reply on Forum without "smart" coding ?

[Aventurine]

Is there a way to deactivate the Forum's 'help' when I'm trying to write a reply?  It keeps garbling all of my links and I've having to edit posts multiple times just to make them functional.

 

All I wanna do is make my own links!!  It's a pain and a half having to fight with the forum for twenty minutes over something that should be straightforward.  I can code links with my eyes closed, I do not need the reply box to "helpfully" rearrange all my links to whatever it thinks I'm trying to do!  Especially since the Edit view doesn't show ANY of the codes and I then have to double-click on everything and edit it piece by piece. 

 

When I paste image codes, the little box pops up to ask if I want it in plain code instead; why isn't there an option for this when I paste a URL?  Or is there, and I'm missing it?  (And I would LOVE an option to set that as a default for everything I paste!  It's silly that I have to tell it every single time.)

[Ruby Eyes]

There is no code to be shown anymore. The new forum software converts your input straight into its internal formatting.

You could try pre-writing your whole post, if it's supposed to contain multiple links (which I suppose you are copy&pasting), in Notepad or something the like.

 

When you pasted your URL, you can right-click the auto-embedded link and select "remove link" or "edit link".

[Guillotine]

It is a huge pain, but there is no longer any sort of way to avoid it. This version of the software removed both posts having their own page and not being forced into WYSIWYG. I don't know why, since it's absolutely The Worst.
 

[Fuzzbucket]

Oh no. The new messaging system is a MILLION times worse.

[Tehya Faye]

I have to agree that this new forum software is rather frustrating; I always write things out in BBCode manually, and the forum is so fussy on whether or not it actually wants to interpret it correctly. The fussiness is probably the worst part - it'd be one thing if it just never worked, but it occasionally does and that just reinforces my persistence in trying to write out the code manually. 

[olympe]

So, so true. I've grown so accustomed using BBCode while writing (thanks to the old DCF, mostly) that I hate to do it any other way. And sometimes, things that used to work don't any more. Seriously, I'm faster at typing out a piece of BBCode than taking my right hand off the keyboard, grab the mouse, move the pointer to the correct button on top, clicking it and returning my hand to the keybaord, but for some things, there is no other way (known to me) to achieve them any more. Like .

[TJ09]

A few notes:

 

• After pasting something (e.g. a link, image, whatever) there's a bar that gives you the option of removing the formatting so you can add your own. It looks like this:
• There is a "Remove formatting" button you can use to undo any of the "automatic" stuff. It's right next to the other text formatting options:

[Starscream]

thanks TJ, that'll be useful.

 

[Aventurine]

@Tehya Faye, olympe, Guillotine

 

Well, at least I'm not alone in hating this?  :/ 

 

I know about the "Plain Text Instead" option, but 1)  that's really annoying to have to click something after doing every action without even a keyboard shortcut (another forum I use will automatically un-format if I CTRL+Z, but that doesn't seem to work here), 2) it's as finicky as everything else about code and often doesn't even show up for a lot of things; 3) when it does, it shows up down at the bottom of the text box instead of the top with the formatting options, so half the time I can't even see it without clicking out of the reply field and scrolling down, then scrolling back up to find my place and finish typing. 

 

Other forums and social media often have a tab that switches the comment field over to Basic form for us manual coders! It's frustrating and just seems bizarre that there is absolutely no way to get rid of this clunky "helpfulness."  And the layout doesn't help, either, with things in inconvenient places that interrupt the user or make it hard to find things. Back when the new forum first launched, I legit didn't see the "Plain Text Instead" box for about three weeks and couldn't figure out what everybody was telling me to click on, because my screen's smallish and the bottom of the comment boxes where it appeared wasn't visible!  I thought everybody was nuts or my browser was acting up on me somehow. 

 

(Speaking of other things that should not be at the bottom of boxes: why is "Go To Inbox" a link at the bottom of the little messenger pop-up??  Just as you go to click on it, it jumps away because messages loaded!  EVERY. TIME.  It should be at the TOP of the pop-up if it can't just, y'know, be the default option for clicking on the envelope icon in the first place  Shouldn't it be 'hover for preview, click to open'?)

[Guillotine]

Yeah, the Plain Text option frequently doesn't work or show up for me, and the remove formatting button is also incredibly unreliable.
 

[TJ09]

1 minute ago, Guillotine said:

Yeah, the Plain Text option frequently doesn't work or show up for me, and the remove formatting button is also incredibly unreliable.
 

Can you explain what you mean by "unreliable" ? I haven't used it extensively, but I've never seen the remove formatting not do what it says on the tin.

[Guillotine]

It frequently just doesn't respond to me clicking on it. I click it, the button depresses, nothing happens.
 

[Ruby Eyes]

Could it be that you had highlit something that simply wasn't formatted to begin with?

[Guillotine]

I wish. No, it was while trying to strip the auto-formatting out of a URL I'd pasted in.
 

[Sesshomaru]

1 hour ago, Guillotine said:

I wish. No, it was while trying to strip the auto-formatting out of a URL I'd pasted in.
 

 

Without knowing your setup, I'd suggest clearing your cache/cookies and making sure your mouse is working properly.

[Guillotine]

3 minutes ago, Miral said:

 

Without knowing your setup, I'd suggest clearing your cache/cookies and making sure your mouse is working properly.

Every other forum and most other sites I use work fine; I suspect that this one just really hates my browser, considering that selecting things is a total crapshoot.
 

[Ruby Eyes]

2 hours ago, Guillotine said:

I wish. No, it was while trying to strip the auto-formatting out of a URL I'd pasted in.
 

Ctrl+right-click, select "remove link"

Edited December 20, 2017 by Ruby Eyes

[Guillotine]

2 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Ctrl+right-click, select "remove link"

I don't know why people are assuming that I don't know how that works, considering that I've mentioned that method randomly working at best only a few posts ago. It is highly unreliable and frequently will not acknowledge that I am trying to remove links if there's more than one link pasted in.
 

[Ruby Eyes]

Um ... you need to right-click the according link though, which hasn't failed me so far even for multiple links pasted (just needs more clicking.) It sadly doesn't work for all at once, last I checked.

[Guillotine]

For me, it breaks immediately after I clear one, if at all. Again, I am doing the correct actions. They just don't work reliably.
 

[Fuzzbucket]

I HATE this thing. I play Bingo here; I put all the stuff together in a wordprocessor, but when I try to paste it, I just get the first link and none of the rest. UGH !

[Ruby Eyes]

2 hours ago, fuzzbucket said:

I HATE this thing. I play Bingo here; I put all the stuff together in a wordprocessor, but when I try to paste it, I just get the first link and none of the rest. UGH !

If you want links within a long text to get auto-linked, try hitting Enter at the end of each paragraph?

[Fuzzbucket]

No - the thing is that I like to get it all ready at once. And then I have it ready to roll, go to paste - and all I get is the one line with the first link in the thing. I'm not looking for an auto link - just - for instance - my today's  entry with half a dozen dragons in it and the word BINGO! several times.