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I've been working with BBCode pretty heavily for a while now, but for those of us who create content, guides, and the like on TL, I would love to see the BBCode expand a bit (being able to use other elements) and follow proper syntax as well. For example, when I want to indent something, I have to manually indent every line rather than have a tag that follows the proper syntax.
I would also love to see the <big> tag be replaced by <size> so that text size could be more adjustable. I have also included some bbcode that I feel should either be replaced or added so that those of us who don't have html privileges  can create better and more organized content. Here are my suggestions, some I feel are more important and I've put them at the top of the list:
I'll be using html tags to indicate bbcode tags so I don't have to write in "code"
Suggestions
• Make <tags> follow proper syntax (e.g. <start tag> content </end tag>), or <hr/>. I really loathe having to do silly things like indent every single line that I want to have indented, instead of being able to do this sectionally. Well I found out that I can use list tags to indent sections, but that isn't exactly the intended behavior (feels ugly as a designer).
• Replace <big> with the more scalable <size> tag. This would also remove the need for the currently separate <small> tag. Currently to get very big text, I am using multiple big tags, and it just seems suboptimal and clunky.
• Give the option to align our text <center> <left> (default), <right>, or <justified>.
• Add <sub> and <sup> (subscript, superscript) options.
• Adding <font> type would be amazing (especially for heading titles), but not super necessary. I'd really just like to have one other font than "just" Arial... I'm kind of at sixes and sevens about this as it's a dangerous thing to consider, maybe if we could just get a monotype [m] tag outside of code that would be enough? Very slippery slope (see below).
• Add maybe a few more colors other than green, red, and blue (maybe even just a grey? or purple? or white (blue posters could use this moreso)?).
• Add a very simple <table> option (tr, td, maybe to a max of 4 columns).
• Add a <jumpto> option for massive guides and being able to immediately jump to specific sections. Looks like url + anchor tags works, see Jingles post.
Also related to formatting but not so much BBCode, it's been sort of silly to have to refer to monitor resolutions as 16: 9 instead of 16 .
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Yep, that works. Thanks. That reminds me, would it also be possible to show all of our options with BBCode in the legend, and not just some of them? I had to look at the innards of staff posts to find out about <big> and <hr> if I remember correctly.
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I suppose you do know you can hit the pound sign next to "quote" to get a URL that lets you link to a specific post, right? Or you can copy link location off of it to save going to the post.
When I'm trying to link to multiple posts, I'll just open a new tab and do that to grab the posts I want to linkto while keeping my editor open.
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yeah, it didn't dawn upon me until this morning that probably should just remove that for two reasons, because it's A. easy to link posts as you mentioned, and B. posts aren't numbered, or at least visually to us.
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ya, need to add <left> and <right>
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still need tweaks on some thing
+ Show Spoiler +No reason i should be able to type this big or super small really
For tabling things i just use monospaced font in code
else things like spaces wont work out and it's hard to get thigns to line up
but yeah it's not idea and you kinda have to hit preview
unless you changed your browser font to also be monospaced
So i can see merit to table also too many things do not work right in code as i think it should
+ Show Spoiler +
If anything should just replace big and small with
Title font
text font
fine print font
colors i'm fine with the limited selection people are jerks when you give them too much freedom ala greenwriter
font is really unnecessary if you want a fancy title font render it in gimp or photoshop or illustrator and put it in as a picture
Justified(default) and center is all you really need things don't need to be super stylized. The anchor is a good idea which is why it's already there else you have to do stupid link to post stuff
In other words i'm for tablet and changing font size to being a small set of 3 to 5 set font sizes.
Indent is still but if you want to put that much effort into styling your post why not just make your post and export it as an image so you can have unicorns for font if you so desire.
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Yeah, just another reason <big> and <small> should be eliminated. The way I've seen size implemented on some other forums (and very nicely), they give a fixed range from say 0-7 (default is 3), where seven is the largest, around 3 em, and 0 is somwhere around 0.5em. The end result is something like [size=6]text[/size] which is quite a bit cleaner than the current multiple nesting workaround.
Tables in code is what I currently do, but it's still a hack (and a pain in the ass, time wise). It's not really that we can't do it, but I shouldn't be putting that much time into making sure it looks correctly when there's a simpler option. Also on this, a monospaced font outside of code would be nice too, e.g. [m]text[/m]
I do agree, too many colors and people will abuse the shit out of it, or could potentially do so, that's why I only suggested a few extras.
On the topic of fonts, sure, I do that all the time to create graphics and better fonts. As a web developer this is a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. It's 2012, we should be trying to move forward, not keeping the status quo.
Duh...Justify would be a REALLY nice addition (justified is not the default btw, left-align is)! But if we had tables, the others could also be useful.
On April 05 2012 03:45 semantics wrote:Indent is still but if you want to put that much effort into styling your post why not just make your post and export it as an image so you can have unicorns for font if you so desire. So when I have a 13K word post and I'm trying to make it as readable as possible, or flow nicely, I should be making an image of it?  Even if you were to just take smaller sections that I wanted to make more fancy or the like, how does that practice help with SEO and visibility? For this reason alone it's a bad idea (as content creators we want our content to be as accessible, and visible as possible, image making for text or format workarounds do exactly the opposite of that).
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TL's lack or formatting options is one of the things that makes it... well TL. Idk. The fact that everyone has to post the same way, it keeps things focused on the content.
It's a little annoying for making OPs, maybe more colors would be nice, but you can always just put text in a .gif and link it as an image.
However there are some significant issues with current tags.
Also if you string enough [big] tags together (like 40), on IE8 the page will actually crash when trying to load. It then tries to reload the page and appears to fail. TL coders really need to add a maximum size limit for text and make sure they test it on IE. Granted they would be banned pretty fast, but still. At least that's what happens when I preview that, never actually tried to post it
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From a design aspect, your first sentence hits a good point. The lack of formatting options and the way threads are set up is one of the things that keeps the cleanliness and succinctness of design on this site, and why TL has a clear visual identity. Adding in extraneous content or options can be a double edged sword as there is a point where the design ideal is compromised for the sake of modularity. This is why adding in different font options (like adding Verdana and Helvetica, or the like) might be one of the worst choices out of this, or at least one of the most dangerous ones. Something that the admins should be thinking about, but definitely a very precarious decision.
Also, I was curious about nesting big and small tags, and wanted to see at which point they just get out of hand:
+ Show Spoiler [10x big + bold] +
+ Show Spoiler [20x big] +
20x is officially ridiculous
+ Show Spoiler [30x big] +
ok 30x is beyond silly, don't even open this
+ Show Spoiler [3x small] +
+ Show Spoiler [6x small] +
I can still barely read this, but at this point it's just silly
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Yup the 30x big causes the page in IE8 to crash. (I'm at work, I don't use this IE crap at home)
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outside text
Ah, so in working around the indent tag problem, which needs to addressed, monk gave me an idea to see if we could "indent" sections of text using lists without using bullets. As you can see it works exactly as <indent> should except that there are a few line breaks for space around it (e.g. <br/><list><br/><br/>)
outside text
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EPT
