Better User HTML Formatting
I wrote the feature to preview away messages and and put line breaks in them. Basically a line break is added by typing in < br/ > (no spaces) which seems simple enough. Ok, so many people probably won't figure it out or read the forums to find out how to do it, but those that want to will.
An interesting side effect of the new limited HTML process of away messages is that you can put hyperlinks in the messages. Hyperlinks have been a feature of the forums and chat pages for a long time but I never actually announced their presence. That's because I hadn't yet built a wizard to allow easy input of them. However, I've given in and announced their presence on the forums and wrote a fairly in-depth description of how to use them.
One of the new link features that I wrote today was the ability to convert the string "$vars" to "user_id=8&key=sWe2d" (or whatever they are for the user who's viewing the link). This allows the creation of internal links which do not log the user out, but nor do they give away the author's unique user_id and key.
A nasty problem did arise however - I found you can't have more than 1 link per post. The cause of this isn't entirely clear yet, though it's probably something to do with the fact that a link's tag is in two parts [ url= ][ /url ] whereas everything else I do is just one tag. It will be investigated and fixed.
Funnily enough, I've just realised that my forum announcement for the line breaks in away messages actually neglects to mention anything at all about adding line breaks to away messages! I'd better go and amend it now!
In other news, it's quiet on the site tonight. If I remember correctly my web stats show that Wednesdays tend to be very quiet on the site. I have no idea why that is though, maybe mid-week blues or something?
An interesting side effect of the new limited HTML process of away messages is that you can put hyperlinks in the messages. Hyperlinks have been a feature of the forums and chat pages for a long time but I never actually announced their presence. That's because I hadn't yet built a wizard to allow easy input of them. However, I've given in and announced their presence on the forums and wrote a fairly in-depth description of how to use them.
One of the new link features that I wrote today was the ability to convert the string "$vars" to "user_id=8&key=sWe2d" (or whatever they are for the user who's viewing the link). This allows the creation of internal links which do not log the user out, but nor do they give away the author's unique user_id and key.
A nasty problem did arise however - I found you can't have more than 1 link per post. The cause of this isn't entirely clear yet, though it's probably something to do with the fact that a link's tag is in two parts [ url= ][ /url ] whereas everything else I do is just one tag. It will be investigated and fixed.
Funnily enough, I've just realised that my forum announcement for the line breaks in away messages actually neglects to mention anything at all about adding line breaks to away messages! I'd better go and amend it now!
In other news, it's quiet on the site tonight. If I remember correctly my web stats show that Wednesdays tend to be very quiet on the site. I have no idea why that is though, maybe mid-week blues or something?
posted by Stephen Robson @ 8:38 pm
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