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Theme Changer

 Topic: Posting links.

 (Read 10132 times)
  • 12 Next page « Previous thread | Next thread »
  • Posting links.
     OP - April 23, 2011, 10:35 PM
    This is a request for something which is really easy to do, but which will make life much more pleasant for people using the forum from mobile devices.

    Please do not  post raw links to any domain, image, article or whatever at all.

    The reason is that, due to the way mobile browsers read url's, any raw link to anything is likely to break the page width for anyone on a mobile. The mobile browsers will not wrap domain names to a new line when the screen runs out of width, and mobile screens are very narrow.

    This means that any single raw link on any forum page is likely to force mobile users to scroll sideways to read all content on that page of the forum. They don't like this. It's a serious PITA and they get grumpy. yes

    Please use the BBC url tags to post any link, and please edit in the article or page title, not the url, so that is what is displayed.

    As an example, this links to this board. Links posted in this fashion will wrap to narrow screens without causing any problems.

    In future, staff will be editing any posts which contain raw links. Anyone using a mobile should feel free to report any post that contains a raw url that breaks the page. You could also PM the poster and request that they edit it themselves.  yes
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #1 - April 23, 2011, 11:02 PM
    Quote from: osmanthus on April 23, 2011, 10:35 PM
    This is a request for something which is really easy to do, but which will make life much more pleasant for people using the forum from mobile devices.

    Please do not  post raw links to any domain, image, article or whatever at all.


    As an example, this links to this board. Links posted in this fashion will wrap to narrow screens without causing any problems.


    would it be better to give a link of help codes for the board osmanthus?? such as this at FFI   Do not post raw links. Kthnx.
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #2 - April 23, 2011, 11:03 PM
     Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy

    Dude, do you realise what you just did? Obviously not. grin12

    I make a post specifically requesting that people do not post raw url's out of consideration for mobile users. I explain why. You reply and post a raw url.

    There is aready an explanation of how the bbc tags work in the FAQ thread in Introductions and in the forum's Help tab: SMF Bulletin Board Code.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #3 - April 23, 2011, 11:07 PM
    This isn't good for my laziness.

    Oh and in case anyone's wondering, you have to write it like this

    Edit: oic yeezevee and Os have already posted a link to explain...
    Attached image is missing * safe_link_example.png (5.83 KB, 741x197 - viewed 634 times.)
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #4 - April 23, 2011, 11:09 PM
    w00t!    mysmilie_977

    Seems like a slightly strange way to get around a mobile devices problem, but I'm happy to oblige.  I do that mostly anyway.
    "Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

    Baloney Detection Kit
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #5 - April 23, 2011, 11:13 PM
    Prince, using code blocks wont work either. Your post will have broken this page.

    I tried that too. I even tried setting code blocks to wrap text. Anything that has http or www or even just a domain name in the displayed text visible on the forum will not wrap to a new line. It's not good for my laznness either. Blame Apple. They made the browsers.

    I'll post an image of the post's code. That way people can see it without it breaking anything.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #6 - April 23, 2011, 11:36 PM
    Did you try with...

    a {
      display: inline-block;
      max-width: 50px;
      overflow: hidden;
    }

    ?

    As an alternative, I think it should be easy to patch the piece of code that outputs links to avoid printing a long consecutive string
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #7 - April 23, 2011, 11:40 PM
    Tried hidden overflow on code blocks. Tried all sorts of things. Nothing seemed to work. Note that code blocks do auto overflow by default anyway, so they should never break pages. Doesn't seem to stop Apple though.

    ETA: Haven't tried that particular trick yet. That gives me a couple of other ideas too. Will try them out later. Not on a Sunday morning. Wink
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #8 - April 23, 2011, 11:44 PM
    Does this happen on Safari/iOS only? Or any Safari?
    I'd like to be able to reproduce this bug but I dont have any iCrap ^_^
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #9 - April 23, 2011, 11:46 PM
    Quote from: osmanthus on April 23, 2011, 11:40 PM
    Tried hidden overflow on code blocks. Tried all sorts of things. Nothing seemed to work. Note that code blocks do auto overflow by default anyway, so they should never break pages. Doesn't seem to stop Apple though.

    ETA: Haven't tried that particular trick yet. That gives me a couple of other ideas too. Will try them out later. Not on a Sunday morning. Wink

    Note: "inline-block" is not supported by all browsers.
    It should not be supported by IE7 and older.
    But in that case it should not matter since IE would just ignore it and render <a> as the default display style (inline).
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #10 - April 23, 2011, 11:49 PM
    Quote from: Tlaloc on April 23, 2011, 11:44 PM
    Does this happen on Safari/iOS only? Or any Safari?
    I'd like to be able to reproduce this bug but I dont have any iCrap ^_^

    Only tried it on Safari spoofed as iCrap. Safari dev menu allows you to do that. And yes I know about IE, but nobody uses old IE on mobile anyway so that wouldn't matter.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #11 - April 23, 2011, 11:52 PM
    Y'know you gotta love this. Now that IE6 is finally dying and even Microbastards are making their newer browsers standards-compliant, lots of people were looking forward to a lovely new future where we wouldn't have to deal with so much bollocks. whistling2

    ETA: That gives me an idea. I wonder if there is a Webkit-specific hack much like the old break-word in IE.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #12 - April 23, 2011, 11:57 PM
    I shall install Safari on Win7 then.
    It's always useful to have yet another browser! :S
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #13 - April 23, 2011, 11:58 PM
    Useful? Really? Safari is useful? Cheesy
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #14 - April 24, 2011, 12:03 AM
    Oh and for the record, I know Tapatalk is cute and would be a quick and easy solution. What bothers me about Tapatalk is that it has a history of a string of fairly nasty exploits, some of which took quite some time to be fixed. Given the nature of this site I am a tad paranoid abut security, and am not keen on installing anything which is liable to increase our attack surface. IOW, even though it may appear to some members that I'm making things harder for them, I am actually trying to look out for their interests.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #15 - April 24, 2011, 12:15 AM
    The inline-block trick seems to work on Safari, I tested it locally with this:

    <style>
    	a {
    		display: inline-block;
    		max-width: 50px;
    		overflow: hidden;
    	}
    </style>
    Hello. <a href="http://www.google.com/">12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890</a> Hello.
    Do not look directly at the operational end of the device.
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #16 - April 24, 2011, 01:18 AM
    @ Os, could you not make it so that if someone posts a URL without tags it appears as "(LongURL - Click Here)" or something?

    (Apologies if this is what you meant by tapatalk....I have no computer skills...)
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #17 - April 24, 2011, 03:21 AM
    Tlaloc: two problems with that. First is it would be best if not all links in posts were shortened. Say someone does go to the trouble of formatting an article heading like so:

    The Title of a Particular Article

    I often do this when posting article excerpts as to me it's just good presentation and it provides a link to the original source. If that is shortened to 50px or whatever then it's not so good. Obviously it's not fatal to the whole post, but it'd be good to find a better solution if there is one to be found.

    Second problem is code tags. They'll stop your browser reading the url as a clickable link, but they wont stop Webkit breaking the page if a url is displayed inside the code tags (beats the fuck out of me how that one works). Hidden overflow wont work on code tags either. Tried that already. Now I can throw in a bit of js to do the job on code tags and make the codeheader class clickable to display the content of the code box, with display:none; as default setting. That's easy. We already do something similar for images inside quote tags. The page will still break as soon as the codeheader link is clicked though, but it can always be collapsed again.

    I'm going to do a bit more searching about this as I'm certain that plenty of other people have had this problem, so there might be a solution out there in teh web somewhere.

    ETA: Thought of a third problem with using hidden overflow to cut links: it will bugger links to YouTube vids. You'll only see the first 50px of the preview image.

    This would also apply to forcing a default text in the url tags: it would screw the content coming in from YouTube. Bugger.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #18 - April 24, 2011, 04:00 AM
    Is there a way to add a pop up when posting a link so that when we click the url button a pop up comes up asking for the url?  That way we could highlight the text we want to hyperlink, click the url button and paste the link in the pop up box?
    So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
    My political philosophy below
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGat4i8pJI&feature=g-vrec
    Just kidding, here are some true heros
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTgvK6LQqA
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #19 - April 24, 2011, 04:07 AM
    You're thinking of something like the vBulletin system. You can do that anyway with the standard bbc buttons. It's no more difficult really. I've used both extensively and really the pop-up doesn't serve any purpose IMO. Not to mention that it'd be a fairly solid bit of coding to implement it.

    1/ Click url button.
    2/ Click cursor between the l and ] of the opening url tag.
    3/ Type = and paste url.
    4/ Click between url tags and paste displayed text.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #20 - April 24, 2011, 04:19 AM
    It'd make it easier for newbs/lazy people I think. (Although most people probably can't compete with my levels of lazyness.)
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #21 - April 24, 2011, 04:55 AM
    Quote from: Prince Spinoza on April 24, 2011, 01:18 AM
    @ Os, could you not make it so that if someone posts a URL without tags it appears as "(LongURL - Click Here)" or something?

    Oh and I can do this, but then it'd remove the option for people putting there own text in I think. Wil try it on local host and see what happens.

    Quote
    (Apologies if this is what you meant by tapatalk....I have no computer skills...)

    Tapatalk is a mobile app for forums. Nifty thing and quite popular, but I'm very wary of its security record, at least as the project stands at the moment. If they can clock up a solid year without issues I'd be happier about it.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #22 - April 24, 2011, 10:11 AM
    K, I've sorted a solution for the BBC code tags. Haven't loaded the changes yet as sat link is batshit again due to weather and the file that gets edited is critical to the forum. We don't want it half borked or the site will be cactus. Will get it loaded tomorrow.

    The new setup does the hidey/show/clicky thing. That'll be handy for when anyone needs to post code as it wont break any layouts unless display is enabled by click.

    Of course long url's could also be posted inside the code tags too, just like any other code, if anyone wanted to do that.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #23 - April 24, 2011, 10:14 AM

    Complicated.

    I go dizzy whenever I see computing stuff.

    Stop writing in Japanese, osmanthus.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #24 - April 24, 2011, 10:29 AM
    Konichi fukn wa, sunshine.  dance
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #25 - May 01, 2011, 01:57 PM
    Please delete
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #26 - May 01, 2011, 03:10 PM
    Why can't you make our life easier by automatically changing the text of the long url to something like "click here"...
    Admin of following facebook pages and groups:
    Islam's Last Stand (page)
    Islam's Last Stand (group)
    and many others...
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #27 - May 01, 2011, 04:57 PM
    Quote from: osmanthus on April 24, 2011, 04:07 AM
    You're thinking of something like the vBulletin system. You can do that anyway with the standard bbc buttons. It's no more difficult really. I've used both extensively and really the pop-up doesn't serve any purpose IMO. Not to mention that it'd be a fairly solid bit of coding to implement it.

    1/ Click url button.
    2/ Click cursor between the l and ] of the opening url tag.
    3/ Type = and paste url.
    4/ Click between url tags and paste displayed text.

    I prefer the popup textbox whereby the user types/pastes the url.  :/
    "Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

    Baloney Detection Kit
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #28 - May 01, 2011, 06:39 PM
    Quote from: muddy on May 01, 2011, 03:10 PM
    Why can't you make our life easier by automatically changing the text of the long url to something like "click here"...

    And what happens when, as I mentioned earlier, I want to format an article title as linked text that happens to be linked to a long url? What happens with links to YouTube videos? At the moment they auto embed on the site's default theme. Change their format globally and they wont do that any more, unless you throw even more code at the problem and chuck in a few more loops.

    As I said, I'll recode the BBC code tags (the # button) so that they become show/hide tags. Long links can simply be placed inside those tags. That's the easiest and most effective solution that I can think of.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • Re: Posting links.
     Reply #29 - May 01, 2011, 10:20 PM
    so you don't have access to code where youtube links get embeded? All you need is an additional else statement where there is an if statement for youtube..
    Admin of following facebook pages and groups:
    Islam's Last Stand (page)
    Islam's Last Stand (group)
    and many others...
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