Wide-body preview plea

September 20, 2007 5:42 PM

Feature request: Is there any way to make the preview box almost as wide as the real comments are?

More than once, I've put too many paragraphs in comments, because they look like big thick blocks of text in the preview box, but are actually fine in the thread itself. Could the preview box be made wider?

(Now that I type it out, this seems kinda bizarre. I might be the only one doing this!)

posted by bonaldi to Feature Requests at 5:42 PM (43 comments total)

If you use Safari, you can resize textarea boxes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:47 PM on September 20, 2007

I might be the only one doing this

You're not-- I do the same. The important thing to note, though, is that the width of the real comments is variable, depending on the width of your browser window.

I guess you could always narrow your browser window to the same width as the preview box.

That might look weird, though.

*checks*

Ooh boy. It sure does.
posted by dersins at 5:47 PM on September 20, 2007

If you use Safari, you can resize textarea boxes.

There's also a firefox extension. Also, one of the MeFi greasemonkey scripts lets you specify a different size for the comment box.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:52 PM on September 20, 2007

I'd completely forgotten about the textarea resize, thanks! All the same, it's weird how mistakes disappear in the comment box, but leap out in the preview.
posted by bonaldi at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2007

I'm working on rewriting the entire site as a greasemonkey script. Then we wouldn't even need to visit the site anymore.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:58 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

"If you use Safari, you can resize textarea boxes."

Yes, but then every other piece of functionality on the website would be broken.
posted by Eideteker at 6:19 PM on September 20, 2007

Does anyone know of any cross-browser resizable textarea javascript demos? I've always wanted to add it, but I've never seen one that worked in firefox, safari, and IE, as well as degrade gracefully on earlier stuff.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:28 PM on September 20, 2007

Note to Mac users who are now vainly trying to resize the comment box: the feature is actually in the Safari 3 beta, not as far as I can tell in Safari 2.

And I don't know if Eideteker is just eidetaking the piss, but I haven't had any problem with Metafilter in Safari.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 6:45 PM on September 20, 2007

Can we actually make them a little wider?
posted by SassHat at 6:50 PM on September 20, 2007

Yes, but then every other piece of functionality on the website would be broken.

Works fine for me.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:00 PM on September 20, 2007

On Safari 2.0.4 (what I'm using now) I don't see the "B" "I" or "Link" buttons that do easy formatting.
posted by ALongDecember at 7:06 PM on September 20, 2007

L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg:

Eideteker has set the "site" part of "website" to blink. I don't use Safari, so this is pure conjecture, but I'm guessing that perhaps blinking isn't supported by Safari, so it's a comment which looks like it looks fine in Safari, but actually doesn't show up as intended, hence the functionality being broken.

If, of course, you consider the lack of ability to see blinking as a breakage.
posted by Bugbread at 7:09 PM on September 20, 2007

mathowie writes "Does anyone know of any cross-browser resizable textarea javascript demos? I've always wanted to add it, but I've never seen one that worked in firefox, safari, and IE, as well as degrade gracefully on earlier stuff."

Don't see that you need javascript for this. This is your current markup for the textarea:

<textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="60" rows="8" wrap="VIRTUAL" style="width:400px;height:200px;"
onfocus="this.style.background='#ddd';" onblur="this.style.background='#ccc';"
>

Just replace the "width:400px" with "width:100%" in the "style" attribute. This is slightly sub-optimal, as the 100% width is 100% width of the table row containing it, but it's close enough. Make the table slightly wider (it's width is 90%, make it 95%) and you've got a textarea that resizes to the browser's width, and still has decent whitespace at the margins.

(Note that the table's minimum size is fixed, so this doesn't work great when the browser is narrow; you probably have a div that's fixed size that the table is (perhaps recursively) inside.)
posted by orthogonality at 7:13 PM on September 20, 2007

Oh, and the Metafilthy Firefox extension can optionally resize the textarea width to browser's width, and the textarea's height to whatever the user specifies. Note that it doesn't do this until the page is refreshed.
posted by orthogonality at 7:17 PM on September 20, 2007

Does the live preview box take its size from the textarea? Because it's not resizing with the comment box, and it's the bit I'd really like wider...
posted by bonaldi at 7:17 PM on September 20, 2007

orthogonality, I don't want a 100% textarea, I know how to do that and people don't like it. What I am looking for is a js way to introduce little "handles" in the lower right to make the textarea resizable.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:26 PM on September 20, 2007

mathowie writes "What I am looking for is a js way to introduce little 'handles' in the lower right to make the textarea resizable."

Poor usability if someone has to resize every page refresh. Perhaps you'd could save the size in a cookie, but then if they resize the browser smaller, do they have to scroll over to find the handles and manually resize? Or do you limit the width to min(preffered_width, browser_width - margin)? They still have to manually resize when they resize their browser, which is poor usability.

If I have the browser set to a width I like, it's probably because I find comments are easiest to read at that width. It follows that reading/composing my own comment probably works best (for me) at that width, given a similar enough font sizes in both the comment input box and the already-posted comments. That argues for the input box being some percentage of the width of the comments.
posted by orthogonality at 7:54 PM on September 20, 2007

On Safari 2.0.4 (what I'm using now) I don't see the "B" "I" or "Link" buttons that do easy formatting.

On Safari 3.0.3, I see those buttons (and they work) if I have my user agent set to Mozilla (Firefox).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:54 PM on September 20, 2007

Based on orthogonality's arguments, would it be possible to allow users to enter a percentage value in preferences? So if user A wants textarea-90% and user B wants textarea-60%, they can just enter the value themselves and take the guessing game out of Matt's hands.
posted by jmd82 at 8:09 PM on September 20, 2007 [3 favorites]

In order to enable the debug menu in Safari 3 Beta (on Mac)

1. Quit Safari
2. Launch Terminal type (or paste) defaults write com.Apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
3. hit return.
4. Relaunch Safari
5 There is no # 5
6 Profit!
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:11 PM on September 20, 2007

If you're using Firefox, get the Resizeable Form Fields extension.
posted by hangashore at 8:15 PM on September 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

I don't want a 100% textarea, I know how to do that and people don't like it.

Matt, what about the preview area? Would people mind that being the same width as the comments themselves?
posted by bonaldi at 8:29 PM on September 20, 2007

Dang, I misread and thought you wanted a larger comments box. Sorry. Must get sleep.
posted by hangashore at 8:35 PM on September 20, 2007

Just someone please make it a little bit wider. Please please please. Hell, even an inch wider would make a lot of difference in how the preview feels. Two inches would be heavenly.
posted by mediareport at 8:37 PM on September 20, 2007

1. Install Stylish.
2. Create a metafilter style containing "#comment { width: 100% !important; }".
3. Profit.

posted by Rhomboid at 8:51 PM on September 20, 2007

1. Install Stylish.
2. Create a metafilter style containing "#comment { width: 90% !important; } #prevDiv { width: 100% !important;} #prevDiv2 {width: 100% !important;}".
3. Profit

Cheers.
posted by carsonb at 9:40 PM on September 20, 2007

Poor usability if someone has to resize every page refresh.

You cookie after sizing. Various CMS and other web apps do this and I find that I resize once and leave it as-is for months on end. It'd be much easier than asking in preferences.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:08 PM on September 20, 2007

mathowie: "Does anyone know of any cross-browser resizable textarea javascript demos..."

Here's an example that works in Safari, Firefox and IE6. Haven't tested it in any other browsers but it looks pretty robust.
posted by Jeff Howard at 10:46 PM on September 20, 2007

I had rather hoped that by now the blink tag would be like smallpox, eradicated from the wild and only kept in a few tightly-sealed test tubes in Tim Berners-Lee's sock drawer.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 10:56 PM on September 20, 2007

Two inches would be heavenly

*waits expectantly*

Anyone?

No?

I'm disappointed in you people.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:07 PM on September 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thanks hangashore. That works great.
posted by peacay at 11:16 PM on September 20, 2007

"Does anyone know of any cross-browser resizable textarea javascript demos? I've always wanted to add it, but I've never seen one that worked in firefox, safari, and IE, as well as degrade gracefully on earlier stuff"

Mootools has a nice demo of their Resizable module. I've had great experience with mootools myself, it's highly cross-browser, degrades nicely and it's fast.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 2:56 AM on September 21, 2007

L. FITZGERALD SJOBERG. THIS BLINK IS FOR YOU.
posted by loquacious at 4:02 AM on September 21, 2007

Why don't people like a full width textbox entry?

As is, it's faintly ridiculous on a big screen. Check out this screenshot for a good example. (I've posted this before, but it's worth repeating.)

I just don't get why anyone would object to a text-entry field that's the same width as the text area it's for. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
posted by Malor at 4:16 AM on September 21, 2007

90%

Even on my blurry screen, looks nice.
posted by carsonb at 6:40 AM on September 21, 2007

Even if you don't want to make the text box as wide as the comments... why exactly is it only like 60 characters wide? Even in the bad old days 80 characters was a text standard and even that really isn't wide enough for me.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:02 AM on September 21, 2007

I'm joining the pileon. 60 characters is pretty small, and I'm not sure I would dislike full width, even 90% looks good too.
posted by philomathoholic at 8:33 AM on September 21, 2007

Same here re: the text box. I'm ok with it being narrow (though I'd rather it wasn't) but I'd like it to be linked to the window size in some way, instead of an absolute width.
posted by whir at 9:11 AM on September 21, 2007

Narrow live preview has gotten to feel a bit silly. Though the fact that my comments look huger than they are when I get to writing is probably not a terrible thing for promoting restraint. Heh.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:37 AM on September 21, 2007

I'm indifferent. One the one hand, it would be nice to have the live preview more accurately reflect what it's going to look like when I hit 'Post Comment', on the other hand right next to that button, there is the one that says 'Preview' which does just that.
posted by quin at 10:41 AM on September 21, 2007

#comment #prevDiv #prevDiv2

One more to add to the list of names: "#extended", for the Extended Description textarea on New Post pages.
posted by carsonb at 12:53 PM on September 21, 2007

WHAT
THE
FUCK
LOQUACIOUS?=D

Thank you, bugbread, for your awesome distillation of my churlish wit.

Matt, whatever you decide upon, please extend the functionality to the Live Preview.

Also, it is perhaps worth noting that this is my 1300th MetaTalk comment. Perhaps.
posted by Eideteker at 4:09 PM on September 21, 2007

I don't understand why anyone should have to install anything for us to get the preview box just a little bit larger on MeFi users' screens. Is there anyone for whom another inch or two would be any kind of problem, browser-wise?

Just do it, Matt. Please.
posted by mediareport at 8:34 PM on September 21, 2007