New WYSIWYG quick reply facility

[Rik]

One of the new features of the upgraded forum software is the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which is quite a change from the 'old' style text input box, and may require some getting used to.

Basically, as you type messages in the post / reply text input boxes, if you add a smiley, you will see the smiley itself in the text box, rather than the smiley code.  Similarly, if you change to bold text or italics, these will appear in the box as you type, in the format you have chosen.

Most of the time, this function is very useful, but there may be occasions when, for example, a block of text copied from elsewhere, does not format in the way you would like it to, or perhaps, line spaces appear where they were not intended.  If this occurs, you may like to disable the WYSIWYG function, to revert to the standard text editor, and there is a simple way to switch off the WYSIWYG function, on a 'per post' basis, by clicking the WYSIWYG toggle button (far right), if a post you are trying to make becomes 'problematic'.  This will revert the posting text box to the 'old' style, but functions such as the URL popup will not work, meaning that links will have to be entered manually.  The WYSIWYG function will be automatically switched back on for your next post.

Similarly, if you wish to have the WYSIWYG editor switched OFF for you, by default, and toggle it to switch ON, when required, such as for Hyperlink popup box function, you can do this in your Profile, by going to Look and Layout, and unticking the 'Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default' option.  There are also some drop down menu options which you may wish to configure, under, 'Choose Quick Reply type'.

We have noticed some isolated issues with the Quote function, for some Chrome or Safari browser users, where it will 'hang' on the 'loading' screen.  To rectify this, please set the Quick Reply type in your profile to 'Non-WYSIWYG (With BBC Buttons and Smilies)'.

On the subject of posting links, these work slightly differently to before, in that to post a LINK type link, using the WYSIWYG editor, you first have to type the link title, say, 'IDNetters', then highlight it, and click the Hyperlink button, where pasting in your link, and clicking OK, will produce a LINK type link, rather than the full URL.

We apologise if some of these changes are confusing.  We are still learning the new forum software ourselves, which, itself, is still evolving, so I am sure that things will smooth out in time.

Please feel free to ask any questions, and we will try to help. 

[Simon]

Due to various incompatibility issues, we have temporarily disabled this feature, until the mod is updated, or other fixes can be found.

This means that the Hyperlink Popup function will no longer work, so links will have to be input or pasted into the text box manually.  I think this may actually please one or two members.