New UI feature: resizable textareas

April 12, 2007 2:33 PM

We're testing out a new resizable textarea feature. If you'll notice the comments area of any MetaTalk thread, there are some grab handles on the side and bottom of the comment box. Stretch that to a usable size, and it will set a cookie as your new default textarea size. The default size is the same as it was, so people that don't use it should be unaffected. We'll add it to other sites as long as it's working for most people here.
posted by mathowie to feature requests at 2:33 PM (143 comments total)

Neat! Works for me, Windows FF 2.0.03
posted by team lowkey at 2:37 PM on April 12, 2007

They don't really blend in well. Could you make the bars the same colour as the background except for the actual handles?
posted by cillit bang at 2:42 PM on April 12, 2007

It doesn't work for me with IE7. The box is now tiny and there's no drag boxes.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:42 PM on April 12, 2007

Works good for me, though it will take some getting used to to have the B/I/link buttons on the left instead of the right. A weird thing is that live preview is now stuck in small mode so it doesn't as much resemble what you'll be posting. Is that expandable too, or likely to stay the same?
posted by jessamyn at 2:44 PM on April 12, 2007

Yeah - No resizie for me with the IE.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:44 PM on April 12, 2007

I'm shocked that it works on Safari.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 2:45 PM on April 12, 2007

Oooh. Neat. It works for me in Firefox.
posted by MsMolly at 2:46 PM on April 12, 2007

Is there any way to auto-reset it back to the default size? read: I stretched it really really big to test the limits and don't want to click/drag/scroll all the way back.
posted by langeNU at 2:46 PM on April 12, 2007

Works for me in the latest version of FF on Windows XP. However, it loses the size setting upon closing the browser.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:47 PM on April 12, 2007

Ok, we have a version working in IE6/7. We just need to patch up the problems with the live code here.
posted by mathowie at 2:47 PM on April 12, 2007

In Opera in OS X, the box is WAAAAAAAY down at the bottom of the screen, and by that I mean that I see the footer links, then more than a screen full of grey screen below that, and at the very bottom is the text entry box, with the handles. The weird thing is that the preview box and the preview and submit buttons are in their normal place above the footer links. as per usual in opera, no italics, bold or linky feature.
posted by shmegegge at 2:49 PM on April 12, 2007

oh and I'll tell you what it looks like in opera on windows vista when I get home from work.
posted by shmegegge at 2:50 PM on April 12, 2007

PithHelmet prevents it from working in Safari. I'm not sure which rule the box is violating, though. Figuring that out would require the skillz of someone far 1337er than I.
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:51 PM on April 12, 2007

Niiice. Is this from extjs? How do you like it as a library?
posted by boo_radley at 2:52 PM on April 12, 2007

Sweet! FF 1.5 mac represent! This is teh awesome!
posted by klangklangston at 2:53 PM on April 12, 2007

I like this.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 2:56 PM on April 12, 2007

Darker handles
posted by boo_radley at 3:02 PM on April 12, 2007

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP and the comment box is flush left against the side of the window. No margin like the rest of the text. That's somewhat jarring, but otherwise it is great.
posted by grouse at 3:04 PM on April 12, 2007

Now it's fixed.
posted by grouse at 3:04 PM on April 12, 2007

Here are the darker handles, really.
posted by boo_radley at 3:05 PM on April 12, 2007

MUCH better.

But it's offset to the right, wasting a lot of screen space to the left of it. It also moves around as I type long lines.

aaaaa bbbbb ccccc ddddd eeeee fffff ggggg hhhhh iiiii jjjjj kkkkk lllll mmmmm nnnnn

Frame grab 1 (after "mmmmm"):
http://denbeste.nu/external/meta01.png

Frame grab 2 (after "nnnnn"):
http://denbeste.nu/external/meta02.png
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:09 PM on April 12, 2007

Please disable it for newer (unreleased outside of webkit.org) versions of Safari. The nightly builds of Webkit (and the one in Leopard) have every multi-line text box as resizable already. Currently what happens is that the comment box ends up teeny-tiny, your resizing handles don't load, but Webkit's resizing handle still does.

You're having alignment issues in FF2/Linux too.
posted by blasdelf at 3:09 PM on April 12, 2007

Doesn't work in FF 1.0.7 (in fact the whole page disappears from 'posting as' onwards) but I guess I should be upgrading anyway.
posted by Paragon at 3:10 PM on April 12, 2007

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:13 PM on April 12, 2007

Doesn't work in Konqueror 3.4.3, but who the hell uses that as a web browser? It's a tiny box (19 characters by 2 lines) and isn't resizable. Works in Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Linux though.
posted by ALongDecember at 3:15 PM on April 12, 2007

This is very nice!
posted by OmieWise at 3:17 PM on April 12, 2007

Ok, we're going to disable it everywhere, except just on this thread alone.

For the people with weird errors in Opera, Safari, etc, do you get errors on the tool's demo site here? (second form down)
posted by mathowie at 3:22 PM on April 12, 2007

It's gonna be hard to fill this space.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:23 PM on April 12, 2007

I use that browser, ALongDecember. It would be nice if it at least went back to the normal size, I'm not asking about getting the cool resizing feature, even. Don't break my Mefi!
posted by bkudria at 3:23 PM on April 12, 2007

Testing, 123. Works in Safari. Would be great if it resized the live preview area too.
posted by SpecialK at 3:24 PM on April 12, 2007

wow, that's fancy.
posted by puke & cry at 3:26 PM on April 12, 2007

Doesn't work in FF 2.0.? , OS X 10.4.whatever. The little handles are there but don't do anything. And live preview is not working at all either.

But I like the idea!!

also, "post comment" doesn't work, you ahve to go through manual preview first.
posted by Rumple at 3:27 PM on April 12, 2007

I stand corrected bkudria :-)

Matt, that link you posted goes to a completely blue-then-white blank page on Konqueror.
posted by ALongDecember at 3:30 PM on April 12, 2007

Same as Rumple, in FF 2.0.0.3, Win XP. The handles are there but nothing happens when I try to drag them; live preview ain't doing anything; and the Post button doesn't work until after you click Preview.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:31 PM on April 12, 2007

Oh wait, now everything works as it should. Weird.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:32 PM on April 12, 2007

Say, that's pretty slick!
posted by lekvar at 3:34 PM on April 12, 2007

Cute!
posted by trip and a half at 3:34 PM on April 12, 2007

Cool.
posted by Totally Zanzibarin' Ya at 3:35 PM on April 12, 2007

Very nice. Works great on the POS Win 98 machine I use here at work with Firefox. I would prefer it if the live preview expanded to the same size (don't know if that's possible) and I liked the [B I link] over on the right, but that's because I'm a creature of habit.

Other than that it seems to work great.

I could see a fast reset button being a 'good thing' as well. Maybe just a small button in the upper or lower left hand corner of the window.
posted by quin at 3:39 PM on April 12, 2007

Still nothing for me. When the page reloads, the box appears very small, then quickly re-sizes. Otherwise, same non-love as before.
posted by Rumple at 3:40 PM on April 12, 2007

OK, I turned off greasemonkey mefi navigator, and live preview is back and the box will resize
posted by Rumple at 3:42 PM on April 12, 2007

It's still not right. On a long line the window moves, and the right resize bar moves even further, leaving it inside the text area. See this frame grab.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:59 PM on April 12, 2007

Nice. So, er, is this, uh, open source? Just kinda asking for informational purposes. You know.
posted by maxwelton at 4:06 PM on April 12, 2007

You might want to put some directional arrows on the handles so people can get the hint that they're draggable. As it is it's just some dots.
posted by puke & cry at 4:11 PM on April 12, 2007

Steven, what browser are you using? That's really weird that the box expands as you type. It shouldn't be doing that at all.
posted by mathowie at 4:15 PM on April 12, 2007

maxwelton: it is indeed extjs
posted by boo_radley at 4:15 PM on April 12, 2007

IE 7, Win XP SP2. The box expands to the left, and the new resize bar moves to the left the same distance.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:18 PM on April 12, 2007

Specifically it tells me it is "Version 7.0.5730.11".
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:20 PM on April 12, 2007

For firefox people that want this everywhere, there's this add-on, but it doesn't save your larger size in a cookie or anything, you have to expand as needed.
posted by mathowie at 4:20 PM on April 12, 2007

Seems to work here (Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP). It would be nice if the live preview box also expanded.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 4:24 PM on April 12, 2007

Oh hell yes. No more goddam hrefs breaking across several lines.
posted by cortex at 4:25 PM on April 12, 2007

Oh my good, he took my suggestion.
posted by cillit bang at 4:26 PM on April 12, 2007

OK. This is done with Firefox 2.0.0.3. It is acting in what I would consider an optimal fashion, so whatever strange thing is happening to me in IE 7 is not a problem in FireFox. The window starts where it ought to, and doesn't move or behave in any funky way when long text is entered. The resize works as it should. So whatever issue I had is IE-specific.

Unfortunately for you, though, IE in its various undead incarnations is the most popular browser in the known universe. Alas.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:27 PM on April 12, 2007

So easy!

(firefox, OSX, blah blah blah)
posted by serazin at 4:30 PM on April 12, 2007

Doesn't work for me on FF 2.0.0.3 on Ubuntu. Live preview isn't working on this thread either.
posted by octothorpe at 4:36 PM on April 12, 2007

Ok, now it does work for me. Cool.
posted by octothorpe at 4:37 PM on April 12, 2007

Firefox recently surpassed IE as the most popular browser on all of mefi, and that includes 3.2 million unique IP/visitors last month, not just the superfan geek users here. It's like 45% Firefox, 44% IE now (it used to be switched, almost perfectly even).
posted by mathowie at 4:41 PM on April 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Looks and works great on FF2 on Vista, but it does go back to the default after closing the browser. Also, if we are all getting ponies, it would be nice to have the live preview resize along with the entry field, but that doesn't sound easy. In IE7 on Vista, it works, but when I drag the handles, the whole page goes white until I release the handle.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:42 PM on April 12, 2007

Firefox recently surpassed IE as the most popular browser on all of mefi

Wow, that's neat.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:43 PM on April 12, 2007

Works for me on FF 2.0.0.3 and IE 6.0. XP SP2.

Nice feature.
posted by bowline at 4:44 PM on April 12, 2007

Firefox recently surpassed IE as the most popular browser on all of mefi, and that includes 3.2 million unique IP/visitors last month, not just the superfan geek users here.

And this will only improve as we continue to IPban and/or rootkit IE-using visitors. Viva la Reinstallacion!
posted by cortex at 4:46 PM on April 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

so far the problem I had in Opera in OS X is perfectly replicated in Vista. I don't know if it's something you did between my last comment and this one, but the handles area is now much neater, with the little dots showing up on a background the same color as the page.

also, it functions perfectly on that other site you linked to in Opera on Vista.
posted by shmegegge at 4:50 PM on April 12, 2007

Nice. I like.
posted by billysumday at 4:53 PM on April 12, 2007

Works for me - Safari, for once, acting as it should.
posted by djgh at 4:55 PM on April 12, 2007

Camino 1.1 beta here. Works great.
posted by danb at 5:10 PM on April 12, 2007

Would it be impertinently snarky of me to hope that ongoing bug reports might be acknowledged and/or fixed before not-terribly-useful features like this are rolled out, considering the problem is quite probably javascript-collisiony?

Yeah, it probably would. You know I love ya, Matt.

Also, to be at least marginally useful rather than just an entitlement-swollen dick, on Maxthon (IE renderer wrapper, as I always explain) on XP SP2 (at work), the textbox works as advertised when resized, but the drag handles don't consistenlty move with the borders. Not a big deal at all, though, when I've got a 20 second hang trying to load the long Vonnegut obit thread, on down to 2 or 3 seconds for shorter threads and the Blue index page.

In addition, on preview, I've got a ghost-textbox with resize-handles (but no box per se) taking up space above the actual previewed comment, as well as there being this textbox I'm typing in below it.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:22 PM on April 12, 2007

Vista/Firefox. Works great.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:26 PM on April 12, 2007

Neat! Works for me in FF 1.5.0.9 and IE 7 on XP.
posted by hoppytoad at 5:34 PM on April 12, 2007

Nifty! And yay for Firefox!
posted by deborah at 5:41 PM on April 12, 2007

I have the same as shmegegge here. XP/Opera. The comment box is 12 mouse scrolls beneath the last comment and the live preview box, and the links/features/sites/search bar. The box only resizes horizontally as well.
posted by goo at 5:47 PM on April 12, 2007

Oh and the sample at Jack Slocum's site worked fine.
posted by goo at 5:48 PM on April 12, 2007

Its like you're some kind of goddamn internet genius or something.
posted by fidgets at 5:48 PM on April 12, 2007

Vista/Firefox - Sweet, now I can see my inane ramblings at exactly the width they will be in my browser after hitting post.
posted by IronLizard at 5:51 PM on April 12, 2007

Oooh, you fixed the alignment issues I was having in FF2/Linux, and the new minimalist "handles" are quite nice. The one in the corner looks slightly odd because of the shape of the dots, you might try shaping it like:

  O
  O  Instead of  O
OO              OO

With a empty space in the corner point. It'd also use 4 dots like the ones on the sides.
posted by blasdelf at 5:51 PM on April 12, 2007

Cool! I'm just gonna sit here for a while and resize the crap out of this field.
posted by brundlefly at 6:06 PM on April 12, 2007

The demo site works fine in Opera.
posted by bigmusic at 6:14 PM on April 12, 2007

I'm not going to deploy this for users, based on all the weird browser issues.

Stavros, I can't replicate a minor subset of users on weird cable modem systems that can't see the server, so I can't really solve it. It's likely a DNS issue with their network.
posted by mathowie at 6:46 PM on April 12, 2007

Stavros, I can't replicate a minor subset of users on weird cable modem systems that can't see the server, so I can't really solve it

Well, look, I understand that it's damn hard to replicate user issues sometimes, and if you can't, it's damn near impossible to debug.

But the hang issue has nothing to do with 'weird cable modem systems', and I can't figure out why you would think it might, if you'd read the thread I linked.

I narrowed it down for you so far in the linked thread and the one I posted before that that I think (and I'm not totally clueless, having done webdev for fun and profit for nearly 15 years, even if I'm far from a trained pro) it's absolutely, unequivocably clear that it's a site issue, not a network issue.

I say this in part because it doesn't appear sitewide, but consistently on certain pages (that is, the Blue home page and threads only).

Look, I'll get off your dick now, and I don't mean to be a pest. If you would like me to try and fix it for you, drop me an email, and I'll see if I can find time.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:10 PM on April 12, 2007

Hah! That's pretty badass.

I mean, I don't know if, independently, I would have said, "MeFi needs one new feature, and that feature is a resizeable textarea!" but now that it's here, I kinda like it.

Thanks, Matt!
posted by Afroblanco at 7:14 PM on April 12, 2007

Now this is spiff.
posted by rhapsodie at 7:25 PM on April 12, 2007

Works in OmniWeb.
posted by kindall at 7:34 PM on April 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Actually stavros, I thought you were talking about a problem that like three people are reporting -- that they can't even reach mefi from at&t cable modems, but you're instead talking about a IE problem with js. My mistake, and I'll take a look at it.
posted by mathowie at 7:34 PM on April 12, 2007

This is so sweet. Thanks!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:44 PM on April 12, 2007

OK, Matt. Offer's still open if you can't reproduce it at your end or figure out what's going on. Not that I guarantee I'd be able to, but if I can see it (which I definitely can), then I can probably sort it out, too.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:46 PM on April 12, 2007

strangely, i have a resizeable box that works perfectly. in this thread only. the grab handles are simply not there in any other meta thread. firefox 1.5.0.11/ubuntu 6.06.1
posted by quonsar at 7:46 PM on April 12, 2007

Me too, q (except it doesn't work terribly well for me). I think this thread only is the testbed.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:49 PM on April 12, 2007

mathowie wrote: Ok, we're going to disable it everywhere, except just on this thread alone.

*smacks forehead*
posted by quonsar at 8:00 PM on April 12, 2007

That was a close call... you could get lost in one of these enormous boxes!
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:07 PM on April 12, 2007

stavros, I've tried IE 6 and IE 7 in XP on mefi.com both logged in and not logged in, and I'm not seeing any hangs.

Can you take a screencast (movie) of what you see in your copy of IE? I bet it's just one script hanging.
posted by mathowie at 8:14 PM on April 12, 2007

For whatever it's worth, I've been seeing that hang too. But it isn't just this site that does it. "Captain's Quarters" does it, and so does Fox News. I'm not sure it's something you can fix; I think it's Microsoft's problem.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 8:42 PM on April 12, 2007

Can you take a screencast (movie) of what you see in your copy of IE?

Not today, but maybe on the weekend, if I have time...

I bet it's just one script hanging.

Almost certainly. In the meantime, did you see my comments about loading scripts before the DOCTYPE declaration? That seemed a bit hinky.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:59 PM on April 12, 2007

man, I really like these new boxes, too. I just wish I didn't have to hit page down 10 or 11 times to use them.
posted by shmegegge at 9:42 PM on April 12, 2007

You could probably get most of the value from this by just having something like a dropdown (with, say, 5 options) which would let you resize the box that the server sends down.
Not web 2.0 sexiness, but about 75% of the value, anyway.

Also, my firefox crashed for the first time ever when typing in this box. Not sure if that's just a crazy coincidence...
posted by blenderfish at 10:25 PM on April 12, 2007

Just one thing: Is there any way to make it auto resize to the browser/column width?
posted by IronLizard at 10:31 PM on April 12, 2007

Does nobody actually read threads any more? I hate to be cranky, but 4 hours ago, Matt said: 'I'm not going to deploy this for users, based on all the weird browser issues.'

So, yeah, we're done here, aren't we?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:36 PM on April 12, 2007

So, yeah, we're done here, aren't we?

He can close threads; he chose not to, probably so people can keep trying the new hotness out, and possibly so they can offer their experiences or opinions. You can stop reading the thread at any time.
posted by blenderfish at 10:52 PM on April 12, 2007

This is quite cool. Thank you mathowie. It is also fun to play with. Can you tell that I am babbling here because I have nothing to say, but want to say it box-wide.
posted by Cranberry at 11:10 PM on April 12, 2007

cdsvdlkjksadflkjfsdal;kjfdsjl;fdsfl;dsajfsds
vcxsdjgatest
test test tes
blalsdhldlkhdsflkjvdsvads
blargh testing grabby handles
tjestflfsaeo;ijvsdijvdjivxdijvxoijvjiovoijfsdjio;fdsoijvdxcv
ds
xvcz

afwoijsaefoifseojivfojivdsoji;vcxvxc

test test

...balrog approves.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:11 PM on April 12, 2007

Forgot the ?
posted by Cranberry at 11:11 PM on April 12, 2007

You can stop reading the thread at any time.

Look, he's already decided not to use the fucking thing.

I honestly don't give a shit whether the thread is open for all eternity, with Metafilter sinners still lining up offer their usefully fawning internet opinions about some useless gadget that's not going to be used anyway as the rest of the population is raptured away into texbox heaven to live with Jesus and the Easter Bunny and Kurt Vonnegut. As you suggest, I will have long before tried to stop paying attention, despite the fact that each new iteration of 'wow that'th really thuper, mathowie!' bumps it up again on my My Comments page, and despite the fact that it's a dead issue and was just pointed to by delfuego rather than being some Coding Miracle Matt whipped up in the MeFi Laboratories anyway, yes, I will have tried, but I will have failed.

Failed miserably, and be condemned for the rest of my days to suffer like Sisyphus a neverending My Comments reminder of your heart-piercing sarcasm. Oh, the ignominy! Oh, the caffeine!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:18 PM on April 12, 2007

hey, this webpage looks nice!

...and so does my text...

..in the resized box!
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:18 AM on April 13, 2007

I like this very much, for the reason cortex noted above about long urls in comments (especially useful when composing posts). Since that's my main reason, it also means that the live preview not stretching is less of an issue for me either.
Off to try that firefox add-on.
posted by Abiezer at 1:30 AM on April 13, 2007

Stavros, for those of us with wide screens, this is a big deal, super useful. I wish you wouldn't bash on a feature addition like that; you may personally not be able to use it, but there are most certainly those of us who can. I made a Metatalk thread about this last year, screenshots included. Mefi looks very strange on a big screen.

Mr. Owie, sir, any chance of having this as a user preference, off by default? I'd REALLY like to have all my textboxes just like this one. Space, glorious space.... *hums*
posted by Malor at 1:55 AM on April 13, 2007

Me, bash? No way. I think resizable textareas are the cat's pajamas, by god. I work at high-res myself, at home at least. I've used the resizable textarea FF add-on for more than a year, again, on my home machine.

I was just riffing off blenderfish's snark, is all. And I'm a little cranky today, and peevish about not-really-necessary semi-crufty new features taking precedence over bugs (although I totally sympathize with Matt -- I love starting new web projects and loathe crushing bugs during the endgame, particularly browser-specific ones).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:07 AM on April 13, 2007

Hey, Matt: Have you fiddled with it since around 11 PST? Right now on FF2/Linux the comment box on this page is ridiculously small (around the size it appears in the latest Webkit browsers)

Screenshot Here
posted by blasdelf at 3:54 AM on April 13, 2007

I'm not going to deploy this for users, based on all the weird browser issues.

Oh yes you are! And you are going to make it an option that's off by default.
posted by DU at 4:14 AM on April 13, 2007

While the cross-browser issues get figured out, why not set the non-resizeable comment box to be a more reasonable percentage of the page width (say, 50%)?

Works great using FF2 on Mac OS 10.4, btw.
posted by myeviltwin at 5:36 AM on April 13, 2007

Works in OmniWeb.
posted by kindall at 1:34 PM on April 13



Hahahhhahaha.

Oh.

You're being serious.

*serious face*
posted by oxford blue at 5:46 AM on April 13, 2007

well, I think it's ajax-y awesome. Treaty of Westphalia, here I come!
posted by GuyZero at 6:28 AM on April 13, 2007

But it isn't just this site that does it. "Captain's Quarters" does it, and so does Fox News.

You haven't changed at all, have you, Den Beste?
posted by Chrysostom at 6:29 AM on April 13, 2007

Intresting
posted by delmoi at 7:08 AM on April 13, 2007

Wow...something that works in Safari! Sweet.
Now, if only we could get the text menu to work in Safari. ;-)
posted by Thorzdad at 7:14 AM on April 13, 2007

Awesome. Now I can resize it to the size of a cigarette lighter and squint more.

Sexier eyelids, here I come!
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:22 AM on April 13, 2007

Oooh.. I like it. I don't quite see the use, but I'm sure others do. Shiny!
posted by arcticwoman at 9:13 AM on April 13, 2007

I love the handles.
posted by Mister_A at 9:26 AM on April 13, 2007

I like it and vote for its ultimate installation on the whole site if the bugs get worked out.
posted by dios at 9:44 AM on April 13, 2007

stavros,

he then also went on to ask for further clarification of bugs since making that declaration. It would seem, though not definitively so, that there's reason to believe he's still working on it after all.
posted by shmegegge at 10:40 AM on April 13, 2007

I guess if I could work out the CSS bugs in the Opera and IE7 browsers, I could make this an optional UI element in your preferences.
posted by mathowie at 10:57 AM on April 13, 2007

I guess if I could work out the CSS bugs in the Opera and IE7 browsers, I could make this an optional UI element in your preferences.

That would be AWESOME.
posted by myeviltwin at 11:14 AM on April 13, 2007

I won't lie, I'm a fan of the functionality when I'm using firefox. But damn if I wouldn't want to be the one debugging the outlying browser issues.
posted by shmegegge at 11:33 AM on April 13, 2007

Malor writes "Mr. Owie, sir, any chance of having this as a user preference, off by default? I'd REALLY like to have all my textboxes just like this one. Space, glorious space.... *hums*"

If your running FF the Methfilthy extension allows you to set text boxes to adjust to the width of the browser and also to specify a height.

This is way cool though.
posted by Mitheral at 11:58 AM on April 13, 2007

Mitheral - as of a few days ago, Metafilthy was still throwing that annoying error and not working in general (not marking last comment read). Has that changed?
posted by deborah at 12:44 PM on April 13, 2007

Nice. But now I'm thinking about goatse again...
posted by hal9k at 1:27 PM on April 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Awesome,


Now ASCII art can be properly formatted
posted by Megafly at 2:17 PM on April 13, 2007

Nope, you still have to disable the comment tracking. Rumour was it was supposed to be fixed a couple weeks ago. Still worth it for the comment reply formatting.
posted by Mitheral at 3:02 PM on April 13, 2007

Now that I've seen it in Firefox at home, I very much like it. Hopefully you can sort out the cross-browser issues.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:46 PM on April 13, 2007

Don't I get credit for this? What am I, chopped liver?
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:24 PM on April 13, 2007

Umm, if URLs that didn't have an ending slash didn't break metafilter, you would have seen me link to this.

omg bug.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:26 PM on April 13, 2007

It would be interesting for those who are seeing some bugs to try out FF and see if any errors are generated in the Error Console for the browser. I've solved many a JS a problem that way. You could try the script debugger in IE, but I've found that much more unreliable.
posted by purephase at 8:52 PM on April 13, 2007

stavros: the weird lag problem in IE seems to be tied to the ajaxy in-line youtube overlay thing. Try disabling that in your user options, if you've enabled it—if you haven't enabled it, problem may be solved automatically, as Matt's rejiggering the include to only happen for opted-in users.
posted by cortex at 9:25 PM on April 13, 2007

stavrosthewonderchicken: I was just riffing off blenderfish's snark, is all. And I'm a little cranky today, and peevish about not-really-necessary semi-crufty new features taking precedence over bugs

Sweet Jesus, dude. Then take your $0 a month elsewhere. You are as entitled to mefi bugfixes as you are to people not cluttering your 'my recent comments' page with their comments. I.e., not at all.
posted by blenderfish at 9:49 PM on April 13, 2007

meow.
posted by shmegegge at 10:36 PM on April 13, 2007

Sweet Jesus, dude. Then take your $0 a month elsewhere.

Though I do tend to take such talk with good cheer and gentle mockery, as I did earlier in thread, I think this time I'm gonna have to suggest that you go fuck yourself, you newbie sack of dogshit.

Or not. I don't really care.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:55 PM on April 13, 2007

Also, that may well be the problem, cortex. The youtube thing doesn't seem to play nice with the plaintext theme. I'll fiddle with it when I'm back at work on Monday and back in IE.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:56 PM on April 13, 2007

I'm gonna have to suggest that you go fuck yourself, you newbie sack of dogshit.

Zing! Well, I know when I'm outclassed. Good luck with those entitlement and anger issues, anyway. I'm done here.
posted by blenderfish at 11:12 PM on April 13, 2007

And about time, too!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:15 PM on April 13, 2007

OK, I'm sorry about the 'newbie' part. That bit was overly harsh. Heck, 34K is like Meta-thuselah round here these days!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:20 PM on April 13, 2007

stavrosthewonderchicken: I really was not trying to make you angry; but it appears that I succeeded anyway. Sorry. Hope your day gets better.
posted by blenderfish at 11:33 PM on April 13, 2007

I really was not trying to make you angry

*tweet* 10-yard penalty for disingenuousness! But just in case you're actually serious, in future, keep in mind that saying things like 'take your $0 a month elsewhere' might just possibly get people's backs up a bit.

Anyway, I'm not angry, not even close. Pro-tip: you'll know I'm angry when I stop making jokes.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:45 PM on April 13, 2007

Ah. That's probably it. I really didn't mean that to sound how it did (it was intended as an abstract "you're not paying Matt any money" thing, not a "I am inviting you to go away" thing,) but I shouldn't have said it either way.
posted by blenderfish at 12:12 AM on April 14, 2007

seriously, part of stavros' charm is his whole "grumpy old man on the porch yellin' at kids to get off his lawn" thing. It can sound mean spirited to the uninitiated, but he's a big teddy bear in a chicken suit, I tell you.
posted by shmegegge at 12:35 AM on April 14, 2007

MetaFilter: a big teddy bear in a chicken suit
posted by brundlefly at 12:46 AM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

stavrosthewonderchicken: I really was not trying to make you angry; but it appears that I succeeded anyway. Sorry. Hope your day gets better.

He's just miffed because old man Johnson down at the apple farm said he couldn't come over and play with Patches any more, nor could he pick the apple leftover from harvest and give them to Cindy, so she can make that delicious apple turnover of hers.

Pro-tip: you'll know I'm angry when I stop making jokes.

In his mind how much time to spend judging his anger status?
posted by oxford blue at 1:42 AM on April 14, 2007