new thread
Just food for thought to our tech crew...
Would there be a way, without being a huge pain, to make it possible to review what your post would look like (including pics and/or html) before actually submitting it? Something that would allow you to correct errors before it actually got posted?
Curious Jim
This would require that we throw two versions back to your web browser - what your submission looks like and a box of how you typed it in, so you could make changes. Then there would be a box to click on when you finally liked what you saw.
One problem is that this would make posting longer for everyone. Some people would think they posted when they didn't, because they didn't jump through every one of the hoops.
A second problem is that we defang some text that may expose our users to viruses or similarly inappropriate material. If a user kept seeing these modifications to his text over and over after correcting it with each submission, it would be frustrating for him, and if we didn't apply the defanging until the final submission, then he'd wonder why it looked like he wanted in preview mode but not when posted.
A third problem would be, "What do we do with uploaded photos?" If someone walked away from a post without finishing it, the uploaded photo would remain on the server, usable anywhere on the Internet, without the moderators ever seeing it. People could upload porno and goodness knows what all, and we'd be serving that stuff out.
Considering the above, we've felt that the complexity of all of this for the moderators and also for the users does not justify the occasional convenience of being able to revise one's post.
Bill
Roger that. Thanks for the info.
You could just have a separate preview and submit button. People could choose to either submit their post immediately, or preview it in the next page. Therefore only those who want to preview posts would go through the hoops.
I have no idea how to overcome that :S
You could always have a timeout, such as 10 minutes. If no action has been taken in 10 minutes after the preview button was hit, the page goes back to the previous page (where the user would see his typed text, and the option to re-upload the images, in they left for a real emergency).
But some would still click the wrong button and think they were done, and their posts would be lost.
This would confuse users to no end. They'd get caught in the middle of the timeout, or they'd miss that they have to reupload their photo and it would not appear. The timeout's working would also depend upon the user's browser type and settings, something we avoid at MLHH. While we take advantage of technical opportunities such as uploading photos, we don't do so unless we can make it simple and work in all browsers with all common browser settings. MLHH must be a friendly place for everyone, not just for geeks.
We could make the site look and operate really slick in some people's browsers and make it look and operate horribly in others'. We prefer to maximize participation over snazziness. We never get complaints that the site or some part of it does not work for someone, and there is a reason - we keep it simple.
"You really need to look at your post before submitting it because you can't change it" works for everyone. Going back to edit won't.
We are also restricted from offering some features because we don't force people to log in before posting. Because of this, the system does not know for sure who is sending each consecutive item to it. We can't have users revising their posts because we can't be sure it's the submitter doing the revising. Also, because we have a threaded board, other users will quote earlier participants' text, so we can't have the original poster changing his text and thereby making the replying user seem stupid. Our users like threaded discussions, not having to register and log in, and uploading photos. Each of these adds complexity that makes revising submitted material more difficult, but we feel the features I listed are seen as more important to the site's users.
Bill
Thanks Jim~
As my arthritic old fingers make lots of mistakes, which I find embarrassing when posted (and to make matters worse, I am learning to type on a laptop) I have wanted to ask that very question for a long time.....and Bill, Thanks for the very reasonable answer. Don't change a thing ! The world will just have to know that I can neither type or spell ! HA!
WWT
I don't know if Internet Explorer can do this, I don't have a Windows PC.
Safari for the Mac also has a spellchecker. Misspelled words immediately have red wiggly lines appear under them, so you get told as you type.
Bill
I have been using this for years....and yes, depend on the easy to use spell checker along with many other great features. Highly recommend using Mozilla Firefox over IE.
******
This seems to be a no frills Message Board without all the bells and whistles that works very well. I think the people that post here are cool folks and can get by a few mistakes from the posters. My two Cents
Todd B.
I do appreciate having post preview on other sites. However, I fully understand Bill's concern, having to be sure that any bells and whistles work in all browsers, don't confuse users, etc.
In that light, I suggest folks use NotePad, WordPad, or whatever word processing program is handiest (hey, even most email programs have spell-check) then cut-and-paste when the result is what you want. If you want to get fancier, get an html website editor to help you make sure you close all tags.