Remove the Visual Editor

[stephanreiken]

It seems to only serve the purpose of getting in the way and forcing you to remember that you have to change to BBCode because Visual Editor is going to tear apart your post and put it back together with random /span tags and just.. terrible coding layout that lacks whitespace and includes 10x as many tags as is necessary to display something.

[Stinky666]

Apr 15, 2013 20:00:15 GMT -8 stephanreiken said:

It seems to only serve the purpose of getting in the way and forcing you to remember that you have to change to BBCode because Visual Editor is going to tear apart your post and put it back together with random /span tags and just.. terrible coding layout that lacks whitespace and includes 10x as many tags as is necessary to display something.

Profile > Edit Profile > Settings

Scroll down, you can select your "posting default". In your case, select BBCode. Now hit save.
You never have to switch from visual to bbcode again.

[stephanreiken]

That doesn't change that the visual editor is unusuable because it tears apart your posts and adds random /span tags. So needs to be removed.

[Stinky666]

Apr 15, 2013 20:07:37 GMT -8 stephanreiken said:

That doesn't change that the visual editor is unusuable because it tears apart your posts and adds random /span tags. So needs to be removed.

I'm typing this into the visual editor, to see if it does that.
I don't usually use it personally.

If it's any consolation, there is going to be a "preview" button added.



Edit:
So, from that, I have no extra tags etc

[stephanreiken]

NAME
SPECIES. GENDER. ALLEGIANCE. [/div][/span]

---

ABOUT THE PLAYER:

---

OOC Account: Your OOC name
What do you wish to be called?: Do you go by something else?
Other Characters: Do you play any other characters? [/size][/span]

---

BASIC INFORMATION:

---

INSERT SPRITE OF Pokemon HERE (UNLESS CUSTOM)[/img][/span]
Name:
Nickname(s):
Gender:
Age:
Allegiance:
Occupation (Position) :
Species:
Level:
Attacks:

[li]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][li][/span]
[/li][/ul][/span]

Abilities:

• Describe any abilities, or special skills your Pokemon has. Such as being able to absorb electricity, or avoid earthbound attacks.

[/size][/span]

---

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:

---

Eye Color: Eye color?
Height: How tall are they?
Build: Are they muscular, lithe, or average?

Other Appearance Information: What other distinctive features do they have? Odd colouration, bald patches, etc.
(This section must be at least 100 words)[/size][/span]

---

PERSONALITY:

---

Likes:

[li] What do they enjoy in life?
[/li][li] (Must have at least three)[/span]
[/li][li] [/span]
[/li][/ul][/span]

Dislikes:

[li] What do they dislike?
[/li][li] (Must have at least three)[/span]
[/li][li] [/span]
[/li][/ul][/span]

Strengths:

[li] What are they good at?
[/li][li] (Must have at least three)[/span]
[/li][li] [/span]
[/li][/ul][/span]

Weaknesses:

[li] What are they bad at?
[/li][li] (Must have at least three)[/span]
[/li][li] [/span]
[/li][/ul][/span]

Personality:

• LIST

[/li][li] AT[/span]
[/li][li] LEAST[/span]
[/li][li] FIVE[/span]
[/li][li] TRAITS[/li][/ul][/span]

---

BACKGROUND:

---

History:

• YOU CAN WRITE THIS IN A TIMELINE FORMAT (Needs at least ten events.)

[/size][/span]

---

ROLE-PLAYING SAMPLE:

---

Please insert an example of your writing here, it does not have to be from Remoor, and can even be a story excerpt.
[/blockquote][/span]

[stephanreiken]

NAME
SPECIES. GENDER. ALLEGIANCE.

---

ABOUT THE PLAYER:

---

OOC Account: Your OOC name
What do you wish to be called?: Do you go by something else?
Other Characters: Do you play any other characters?

---

BASIC INFORMATION:

---

INSERT SPRITE OF Pokemon HERE (UNLESS CUSTOM)

[/img]
Name:
Nickname(s):
Gender:
Age:
Allegiance:
Occupation (Position) :
Species:
Level:
Attacks:

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

Abilities:

• Describe any abilities, or special skills your Pokemon has. Such as being able to absorb electricity, or avoid earthbound attacks.

---

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:

---

Eye Color: Eye color?
Height: How tall are they?
Build: Are they muscular, lithe, or average?

Other Appearance Information: What other distinctive features do they have? Odd colouration, bald patches, etc.
(This section must be at least 100 words)

---

PERSONALITY:

---

Likes:

• What do they enjoy in life?
  
• (Must have at least three)
  
• 
  

Dislikes:

• What do they dislike?
  
• (Must have at least three)
  
• 
  

Strengths:

• What are they good at?
  
• (Must have at least three)
  
• 
  

Weaknesses:

• What are they bad at?
  
• (Must have at least three)
  
• 
  

Personality:

• LIST
  
• AT
  
• LEAST
  
• FIVE
  
• TRAITS

---

BACKGROUND:

---

History:

• YOU CAN WRITE THIS IN A TIMELINE FORMAT (Needs at least ten events.)

---

ROLE-PLAYING SAMPLE:

---

Please insert an example of your writing here, it does not have to be from Remoor, and can even be a story excerpt.
[/blockquote]

[stephanreiken]

As you can see, the visual editor damaged that post quite a bit. Adding /span for no apparent reason.

Also it has the background color and text color of what I copied for similarly no apparent reason.

[baz657]

I've noticed this before when copy/pasting, for example, a pdf document into the visual editor.

Using the visual editor copying a line from this page I'd get

<nobr>b.</nobr><nobr>a defective spring eye


</nobr>

Using BBCode

b. a defective spring eye

And if you need to edit the post in visual (like I did with this one)

<nobr>b. </nobr>
<nobr>a defective spring eye </nobr>

[Ryan Roos]

First let me add a disclaimer about copy pasting. We are working on improving copy pasting, but everyone needs to understand that this is not correct behavior. Everyone has a fully functional composition editor built into their forum. We've improved this 10 fold in v5. This is what people should be using to compose content. People can't just copy things from other sources and expect them to flawlessly work. The most common mistake when doing this that I witness is when I see people copying websites. Literally highlighting something on another website and pasting it into a post and then complaining it doesn't format properly. Of course it doesn't. That page copied from is made up of HTML at a minimum and that is all being rendered by the browser. When someone copies they aren't copying half of what's actually there. This includes copying content off of forums too. Just because it was composed on ProBoards doesn't change the fact that it's still HTML at the core once it's displayed on the page. It can't be expected to work. And it never will. We are attempting to cater to those that copy out of other composition resources like Word or other document programs. But support for that is a long road because programs like that don't all use one way of doing things and sometimes directly contradict each other. Pasting from Word to another program isn't going to work any better than Word to a ProBoards forum. They're all different. People need to realize that anything formatted anywhere has a lot going on in the background, and when they copy that content they don't bring everything with it. Sometimes they even bring bad things too.


Okay now stephanreiken

Your post isn't being torn apart and being put back together with random anything. It is being correctly formatted and fixing improper BBCode that it detected. BBCode 2.0 is heavily based off of existing web standards. You can now do things like apply styles directly to tags. When you post in v4 or v5 (or any forum service) it takes what you wrote and it converts it to HTML. When you toggle between Visual and BBCode mode it is no different. It takes what you gave it, it then renders it and then when you toggle back to BBCode mode it reconverts it back into BBCode. Except it does it following it's proper formatting and use of the BBCode. It was no different in v4, you just couldn't see it happening. And with all the improved and corrected BBCode in v5 you can do far more than you ever could in v4, plus now it all adheres to the web standards used around the world. The internet is constantly moving forward and with that it expands, grows, and changes. Companies and websites that don't progress with these changes fail and die out. As the internet moves forward, so do we.

Now all of that being said, all of the BBCode you know still works. You can still do everything you know. It all still works, it's all still supported. But if you tell it to convert to visual and then switch back it is going to update things to the proper way. Sorry.

In your examples above you pasted BBCode (or typed it) directly into the Visual editor. The visual editor is a WYSIWYG editor. That means 'What you see is what you get'. So if you type a bold tag and it looks like a bold tag, when you post it's going to be a bold tag, literally. Open Bracket B Close Bracket. You are used to v4 so you should set your default to be BBCode in your profile (instructions above) and use the Visual editor either never or only as a preview before you post. In v4 you had just the BBCode editor, but in v5 we added the Visual Editor for people who prefer WYSIWYG editors. You aren't forced to use it, and never have to.

Just remember when using v5, everything you could do before you can still do, but you can also so so much more if you desire.

Thank you.

[Ryan Roos]

Apr 15, 2013 20:12:29 GMT -8 Stinky666 said:

If it's any consolation, there is going to be a "preview" button added.

No. There isn't. Patrick Clinger doesn't feel that it's needed and hasn't seen enough member support to warrant it's addition. The task was vetoed before it was started. Sorry.

[Stinky666]

Apr 16, 2013 8:18:07 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Apr 15, 2013 20:12:29 GMT -8 Stinky666 said:

If it's any consolation, there is going to be a "preview" button added.

No. There isn't. Patrick Clinger doesn't feel that it's needed and hasn't seen enough member support to warrant it's addition. The task was vetoed before it was started. Sorry.

Ah right ok.
Personally I am happy/fine with the way things are currently, so I personally am not bothered by it =)

Thanks for letting us know.

[stephanreiken]

[style=margin-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; width: 509px; background: #990000; color: #ffffff; text-align: justify; font-size: 18px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 3px 3px 0px 1px #000;]

[smear:FF9999]Seika Kugimiya[/smear:FF4040]
[smear:FF9999]Beltane[/smear:FF4040]

[/b][/size][/center][/style]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=width,509px,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=style, background: url(http://i.imgur.com/ULH0i.png) no-repeat; width: 509px; height: 382px; padding-left: 10px; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 3px 3px 0px 1px #000;]

[style=margin-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; width: 509px; background: #990000; font-size: 18px; color: #FF6666; text-align: justify; font-size: 10px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 3px 3px 0px 1px #000;]

[/style]

I'd say its clear it doesn't work.

And the sheer number of tags that the visual editor added to the post shows that it just destroys posts. If it was a what you see is what you get editor it would not have so drastically changed the appearance of what I typed into it. It doesn't do its job either way, so should be removed until it works properly. Or just plain removed altogether.

[Stinky666]

stephanreiken, don't forget as Ryan Roos has mentioned, the UBBCode follows web standards.
So for instance where you have

[style=margin-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; width: 509px; background: #990000; color: #ffffff; text-align: justify; font-size: 18px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 3px 3px 0px 1px #000;]

That's incorrect. You need to add certain parts to it, like it would work in other standards. For example, the above should contain these simple parts i have added in red

[font style="margin-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; width: 509px; background: #990000; color: #ffffff; text-align: justify; font-size: 18px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 3px 3px 0px 1px #000;"]


And your closing tag should be [/font], not [/style].
I'm sure someone else could explain all the other stuff you have done wrong or need to adjust etc.


Edit:
Did the visual/preview add anything to your above post? If so, what did it add?

[Jessecast]

That is because you are not using ubbc supported tags.

[Nori]

I don't mean to butt in but I'm pretty sure that just supports Ryan. You have tags in there that are not supported by default and I'm not sure you did 'type' it as you said but copied it into the Visual Editor. Now, if you were to copy-paste in the BBC editor none of that would happen as it would give you the plain text and then you could build the thing correctly as it should appear and more often than not the Visual Editor is a great preview. What you have there is not an abundance of additional tags or a destruction of any sort. What you have there are tags that aren't recognized and thus it does nothing to conserve the other information so if you needed a fix it would be possible in the BBC editor. A lot of what I see in there as what you call 'extra tags' are valid instructions for a table, but you haven't given it a table; though it would be trivial to make it so since it reserved all the formatting for you, nothing was destroyed.

I find the Visual Editor to be a better live preview than those old footer codes for v4. Those older live previews were annoying, as they would constantly push your screen down whilst typing, and it wouldn't show initially on a reply but would rapidly expand the page when you clicked into the text field and thus scrolling was necessary where it shouldn't have been. The visual editor is also a step forward in that now the default preview doesn't require a page load, you just switch tabs. Perhaps if you treated it more like a preview and not a builder, as you seem to be fond of more than just plain text and simple styling (like bolds, horizontal rules, etc). Use it for touch-ups in spacing, or typing a paragraph amongst a sea of BBC.

If you're going to copy-paste something you should already have access to the BBC formatting and so should be going into the Edit->BBC of the post in question and getting it from there and not taking it from somewhere you don't have access to it from. If there's something you like that other people have build it properly and make it your own. It's always a lot easier to modify something in the future that way.