Pony request: Text formatting tools in AskMe

December 6, 2005 8:04 AM

Can we get the little " B I link ABC" box for Ask Metafilter yet?

If we can have it for comments, we might as well have it for questions, too. Several posters could make use of it.
posted by MrZero to Feature Requests at 8:04 AM (20 comments total)

Yeah, I need to add this.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:47 AM on December 6, 2005

In the meantime just use them from somewhere else on the site and paste in the formatted html. They are really convenient and I must admit to sometimes formatting stuff for other blogs using a Metafilter text window. Some day I will accidently hit "post comment" and be quite embarrassed.
posted by caddis at 9:08 AM on December 6, 2005

Consider this a vote for FCKeditor.
posted by Plutor at 9:58 AM on December 6, 2005

caddis, I know what you mean. I formatted the post in a comment window. It's like, I know how to do it manually, but it's so much eeeeeeeeeasier with the button thingieeeees.

Also, the ugliness of http://www.... in a post has been getting on my nerves for a while. Hence, the pony request.
posted by MrZero at 10:52 AM on December 6, 2005

FCKeditor doesn't work in safari either, and I don't really want to see people making bulleted 36pt purple lists.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:43 AM on December 6, 2005

Has anyone made a FF extension or greasemonkey script to add them to any form on the web?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:44 AM on December 6, 2005

A few years ago I asked the developer of my preferred text-editing app, NoteTab Pro, if he would consider wrapping his product in a dll or something and making it some sort of a browser plug-in that transparently worked in form text entry boxes. This was before the primacy of Firefox and its extensions. He didn't seem to think it was such a compelling idea. Also, I just did a search on Firefox's extension pages looking for spellcheckers. There was like one hit.

This is item #37 on my list of products that there's a market for but no producers.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:01 PM on December 6, 2005

ms word has turned you all into cretins.
posted by quonsar at 12:02 PM on December 6, 2005

quonsar: ms word has turned you all into cretins.

I don't think it's so much a case of folks not wanting to learn and add the html code, but when you're knee deep in thought, trying to get a point across, often following the preceding multiple and varying replies, it's just easier to click on a quicktag button.
posted by ceri richard at 12:11 PM on December 6, 2005

it's just easier to click on a quicktag button.

That's true, but it doesn't really address his point. It may well be that MS Word has turned us all into cretins. I certainly see the evidence in myself.
posted by languagehat at 1:04 PM on December 6, 2005

i should have said 'ms word has turned all of us into cretins'.
posted by quonsar at 2:35 PM on December 6, 2005

I don't use Word (but if I did I'd create and use styles for bolding and italicising...)

I hardly dare get into an argument on semantics with you of all people languagehat (gulp!) but didn't I address the point? Here's how I read the two posts:

quonsar: ms word encourages you into bad formatting habits
me: yes, it does and yes they're bad habits but bad = easier when you've other things on your mind and since the focus of MetaFilter is intelligent discussion (fuck knows what I'm doing here then), I don't think quicktags are the spawn of satan.
posted by ceri richard at 2:37 PM on December 6, 2005

On preview: Then I should have said:

quonsar: ms word encourages us into bad formatting habits
posted by ceri richard at 2:38 PM on December 6, 2005

FCKeditor doesn't work in safari either, and I don't really want to see people making bulleted 36pt purple lists.

Safari doesn't support the necessary JavaScript for any of the fancy-pants in-browser visual editors.

I haven't used FCKEditor, but I've used TinyMCE, which is similar, on a couple of sites. It's customizable, so you could set it up to not allow bulleted 36pt purple lists. I'd be surprised if FCKEditor wasn't configurable, too.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:58 PM on December 6, 2005

ceri: 'Twas but a jest. quonsar brings out the cretinous jester in me.
posted by languagehat at 3:26 PM on December 6, 2005

bad formatting habits? i was talking about insisting on buttons (or, god help us, "creating styles") for <b< and </b>
posted by quonsar at 3:37 PM on December 6, 2005

er, that would be <b> and </b>. should have used the fricken button.
posted by quonsar at 3:38 PM on December 6, 2005

*wanders away muttering*
posted by quonsar at 3:39 PM on December 6, 2005

*points at quonsar, lectures about the effects of MS Word*
posted by languagehat at 3:42 PM on December 6, 2005

M Sword.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:04 PM on December 6, 2005