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RE: A Feature Thought

Erik Voskeuil — Wed, 02 Jul 2003 10:10:00 GMT

I agree with Darin, non-technical users (read non-programmers) all hit single-enter and they mean with that: go to a newline. By pressing it twice, you should have some space created between the text blocks.

I know that most tools do not work currently that way, but for intuitive use it is a great improvement ! Why should you explain to each and every (new) user that this is the way it works? I am convinced that you wil never ever have to explain this to any user if it works the way that Darin proposes.

RE: A Feature Thought

Ryan Healey — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 17:31:00 GMT

Hi Darin,

Thank you for your input - I would be very interested to hear if others feel the editor should behave this way. If this seems the general consensus i will certainly update this feature to use single spaces by default.

Any responses users can offer will be greatly appreciated

RE: A Feature Thought

Darin Beard — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:17:00 GMT

I agree that most other WYSIWYG editors use paragraph breaks instead of line breaks, but I am of the opinion that just because most do it doesn't make it the better way to work.

When I hit the RETURN key I don't want a doublespace... I think it should be the other way around... hold the SHIFT key to double space and single space by default. That is only my usability opinion on it.

RE: A Feature Thought

Ryan Healey — Fri, 09 May 2003 21:08:00 GMT

Hi Josh,

I'll take your comments on board and look into the behaviour of the WYSIWYG editor within the next release. I've not had any comments from our users regarding this issue before now but your point is valid.

I've performed a little research into this suggestion and found that most of the popular ASP.NET server control based WYSIWYG rich-text editors use paragraph breaks. For example...

I'd be happy to look into other WYSIWYG editors that use line breaks as the default spacing for carriage returns. Please let me know if you have any further thoughts on this issue. I'm very happy to listen to comments and adjust our application accordingly

RE: A Feature Thought

JWA — Wed, 07 May 2003 13:19:00 GMT

Hi Ryan,

Yes, that's what I mean. FrontPage uses paragraph breaks in normal mode, but most other apps like Word, Outlook, and other textboxes on the net default to just line breaks. I think that most users of the forums will be more used to line breaks and therefore be caught out a bit by the paragraph breaks. I know I find myself hitting enter twice between paragraphs out of habit.

I think that this is probably one of those design dilemas where you have to decide between the technically better way or the way the users will expect it. Don't you hate those?

Anyways, it imght be nice if this was at least an option left to the person deploying it.

Regards,

-- Josh

RE: A Feature Thought

Ryan Healey — Wed, 07 May 2003 05:12:00 GMT

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the feedback. Your suggestion regarding the quote is great. I'm planning on adding anchor points to all posts very soon and this would be the ideal time to add your suggestion. I'll keep you posted

When you say double space within the WYSIWYG editor do you mean how it inserts paragraph breaks by default and not line breaks when you hit return ? - I'd be very happy to look into this if you feel this is not working correctly

The editor works very similar to packages link MS FrontPage. To add a single space you need to hold Shift and Enter

I look forward to your response,

A Feature Thought

JWA — Wed, 07 May 2003 01:40:00 GMT

Hi Ryan,

I was just looking through the new version now that you have it up on your site. Everything looks nice to me (The double-spaced operation in the WYSIWYG editor is still a bit odd to me )

I like how you now have the quote box at the top of the message, that makes a lot more sense. By the way, I really like that way of implementing the quote into the post. But, it occurred to me that it might be helpful if the quote box in some way linked back to the original post. Maybe the " ..." at the end of each quote could actually be a link that took you back to the quoted post?

Just a thought, maybe others will be able to comment on the desireability of this, and it might be a worthy addition to the future features list.

Regards,

Josh