Forum Topic

One of the biggest challenges I have had posting stories is the inordinate amount of time I have to spend removing unneeded Carriage returns after I have posted a story. This happens because I write the contrnt in a word processor to take advantage of spellcheck. When I paste it into a content box, it looks fine. When I then preview it, it looks fine. It is only when I publish it that I see the formatting all messed up. To me it looks unprofessional and like I did not care when posting. It then takes way too long to fix it step by step.

So, have I missed something here that I will kick myself about when I realize how easy it would have been to avoid?

Second, I am not sure why there is no Spellcheck functionality in the editor?

Finally, It would be nice to be able to save a story as a draft until I am really ready to publish it. Again, is this something I have overlooked?

Thansk for all your hard work!

ryan

at 13:00 on September 21st, 2007

What i do to avoid the formatting problem is write an article in word and then paste it in to note pad and then to nowpublic. it's an extra step but avoids much of those formatting problems.

i do not know about any formatting changes to the editor. in my firefox browser though there is a built in spellcheck.

i don't think there is talk of draft feature, i usually save all the word files until I'm ready to publish.

hope this helps.

Christopher Byrne

at 13:26 on September 21st, 2007

For some reason, my Firefox spellchecker does not work on this site...

ryan

at 13:29 on September 21st, 2007

Hmmm, not sure what to make of that.

Morbus Iff

at 09:05 on September 24th, 2007

The Firefox spellchecker is unable to handle the "WYSIWIG" text area field - the thing that allows you to click a B or an I to markup text as bold or italics, respectively. At the bottom of each of these boxes (such as this comment box I'm using) is a "Disable HTML Editor" link - if you click it, it'll return the textbox to a "normal" one, which Firefox can spellcheck dandily. Make any corrections, then click "Enable HTML Editor" to return to the visual/WYSIWIG view.

Christopher Byrne

at 15:55 on September 25th, 2007

Thanks! I was afraid to try that mid-article, but will do that from now on.

dysamoria

at 01:55 on October 17th, 2007

Hi Christopher... i just wanted to acknowledge that i see you were 100% sincere when you said you feel my pain, in reference to the thing of mine you marked as spam. i see that you've been on this track already. 3 weeks ago. Nothing's changed. Depressing. i have some problems with blogger's formatting but it is not nearly as frustrating as the one here. It's just plain not WYSIWYG. It's a shame that a better technology never replaces the evolutionary kludges that convert something never intended for page layout into something people use for page layout. Frustrating!

dysamoria

at 02:08 on October 17th, 2007

ok, so, feeling stupid... please help... how exactly do i do what you suggested, Christopher? i have my spam-marked article in copy buffer and there's no New Thread button or anything like that.

What am i missing?

in the mean time, here it is, in the thread you created, so i believe i'm On Topic:

okay, i've tried to be calm about this one. i've tried to correct
things manually in the HTML source view. i've even tried to use
Dreamweaver to insert code directly into the HTML view instead of using
the WYSIWYG editing box at all.

i can't stand it any more. It encumbers the story writers. i
recently read a story which was quite confusing to me because the
formatting was messy. i posted a comment stating this and acknowledging
that the editing environment in the story posting is not so great

But i just spent 10 minutes trying to correct broken lines in the last posted story and this is ridiculous.

This is supposed to be a tool, not a geek machine.

Please, NowPublic.com, do the following:

Fix the editor's problems with line breaks and non-breaking-spaces.
Enable web browser features like spell checking to work in the editor.
Make sure that WYS in the editor IWYG in the final product.
If all the above fails, replace the editor with a standard editor (using the API of the host browser or OS).

Sorry to use story posting features to complain about this, but...
this is what i consider Non-Humane Computing. It's not an issue for a
silent request to technical support. It's a global issue for anyone
posting here.

For your technical knowledge: i am using Firefox (most recent update) on Windows Vista Business.

Thank you for taking the time to read and reflect on something vital to the success of NowPublic.com.

While i'm at it, i have dyscalculia. The math questions are a huge frustration to me, but luckily they are single digit additions which i can handle. Is there something wrong with the images of numbers and letters that most other sites use?

jordan

at 12:41 on October 17th, 2007

We ALL have dyscalcula when using that CAPCHA function... because it sometimes gets the math wrong! We're looking at behind-the-scenes alternatives to this, so, ultimatley, the onus won't be on the users to prove that they're human and not android.

Swan

at 12:53 on January 21st, 2008

Dysamoria (your last post): High Five!

Dyscalculia: Using the Windows calculator would help a lot with your frustration. :)

Spellchecker: There is a firefox extension which allows you to spell check in input fields.

Ryan has mentioned one of the two only sure fire ways to ensure that formatting stays in tact.

The second way is what I do, I simply write my post up in Wordpad (no wordwrap is essential,) paste it into the Highlight tool when finished, apply italics and bolding where needed then upload.

I would also like to see the ability to embed videos within stories. I've just joined Vox news and their videos are embed only - no downloading or license for anything else. And their video library is superb! I want to use their videos here.

I mentioned the latter issue in a unique post of it's own around three weeks ago - still no answer!
~ Swan

ScienceDave

at 03:04 on February 11th, 2008

Although this comment isn't directly related to Christopher's original post, it is similar:

Given the 6 hour window for "Headlines", the fact that the majority of active users are within a few time zones of one another (i.e. North America), and lastly how I never have time to write during the day when most users are out and about on NP, I would love the option to post-date articles (that way, users can write at their leisure, and publish their articles during times of higher site traffic).

The above may seem a bit selfish (i.e. I want people to read what I write!), but I (and maybe other users?) like posting articles with a bit of background work in them. Therefore, posting when I have time (at night) wouldn't tend to facilitate much conversation around them. Just a thought - I have no idea what the logistics of doing so would be.