Fixing How Metafilter Renders BLOCKQUOTE and LI Items

March 12, 2010 11:00 AM

Could how Metafilter renders BLOCKQUOTE and list tags be fixed/tweaked?

The simplest way I can demonstrate it is this way.

---

Here's an introductory line.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus scelerisque dui quis sapien pretium ac malesuada sem rhoncus. Nulla dictum consequat nibh et bibendum. In libero mauris, posuere quis facilisis nec, ultrices sit amet orci. Praesent tristique sem non metus scelerisque facilisis.

Quisque suscipit velit quis ipsum lacinia ac aliquet ligula elementum. In ullamcorper tellus dolor, id ullamcorper augue. Nunc congue interdum est quis tristique. Ut varius tortor in diam auctor blandit a quis arcu. Donec nisl nunc, laoreet vel ultricies accumsan, auctor nec enim.

Here's a closing line.

---

The way that looked when typing was the natural way most people would type this on the Web, yet Mefi adds the extra lines:

Here's an introductory line.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus scelerisque dui quis sapien pretium ac malesuada sem rhoncus. Nulla dictum consequat nibh et bibendum. In libero mauris, posuere quis facilisis nec, ultrices sit amet orci. Praesent tristique sem non metus scelerisque facilisis.

Quisque suscipit velit quis ipsum lacinia ac aliquet ligula elementum. In ullamcorper tellus dolor, id ullamcorper augue. Nunc congue interdum est quis tristique. Ut varius tortor in diam auctor blandit a quis arcu. Donec nisl nunc, laoreet vel ultricies accumsan, auctor nec enim.</BLOCKQUOTE>

Here's a closing line.

---

Now, if I want to avoid the extra lines that it inserts, and have BLOCKQUOTE rendered like I would using it elsewhere on the Web, I actually have to have that first BLOCKQUOTE be merged into its surrounding paragraphs.

---

Here's an introductory line.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus scelerisque dui quis sapien pretium ac malesuada sem rhoncus. Nulla dictum consequat nibh et bibendum. In libero mauris, posuere quis facilisis nec, ultrices sit amet orci. Praesent tristique sem non metus scelerisque facilisis.

Quisque suscipit velit quis ipsum lacinia ac aliquet ligula elementum. In ullamcorper tellus dolor, id ullamcorper augue. Nunc congue interdum est quis tristique. Ut varius tortor in diam auctor blandit a quis arcu. Donec nisl nunc, laoreet vel ultricies accumsan, auctor nec enim.

Here's a closing line.

---

Source:

Here's an introductory line.<BLOCKQUOTE>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus scelerisque dui quis sapien pretium ac malesuada sem rhoncus. Nulla dictum consequat nibh et bibendum. In libero mauris, posuere quis facilisis nec, ultrices sit amet orci. Praesent tristique sem non metus scelerisque facilisis.

Quisque suscipit velit quis ipsum lacinia ac aliquet ligula elementum. In ullamcorper tellus dolor, id ullamcorper augue. Nunc congue interdum est quis tristique. Ut varius tortor in diam auctor blandit a quis arcu. Donec nisl nunc, laoreet vel ultricies accumsan, auctor nec enim.</BLOCKQUOTE>Here's a closing line.

---

The same error occurs with list items, but can sometimes be even worse:

---

Introductory line.

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
• Curabitur vel nisi quis est malesuada tempus.

Closing line.

---

Source:

Introductory line.

<UL>
<LI>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
<LI>Curabitur vel nisi quis est malesuada tempus.
</UL>

Closing line.

---

But if I merge:

---

Introductory line.

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
• Curabitur vel nisi quis est malesuada tempus.

Closing line.

---

Source:

Introductory line.<UL><LI>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.<LI>Curabitur vel nisi quis est malesuada tempus.</UL>Closing line.

---

I know, it's relatively a small thing compared to world peace. But it's something that has been a bit of a minor bee in my cap since I started making comments, and I figured I'd finally get around to making it a pony request.

posted by WCityMike to Feature Requests at 11:00 AM (48 comments total)

ARGH. And to make things even more confusing, my Preview of this post looks absolutely nothing like the final version of it, with only the LI tag looking semi-abnormal. Were these bugs stomped already, and I just never noticed it?
posted by WCityMike at 11:02 AM on March 12, 2010

You know we're all in Austin Texas right now, right?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:03 AM on March 12, 2010

Could we also bring back the blink tag?
posted by KokuRyu at 11:04 AM on March 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

No, I didn't.
posted by WCityMike at 11:05 AM on March 12, 2010

Could we also bring back the blink tag?

What do you mean? It's right there! Oh wait, now it's gone. Hmm. Oh, now it's back!
posted by FishBike at 11:05 AM on March 12, 2010 [21 favorites]

Yeah, I think these were fixed quite a while back. I see the extra linebreak in front of the opening <ul>, I'll take a look at that. Thanks for the heads up.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:05 AM on March 12, 2010

Why are y'all in Austin?
posted by WCityMike at 11:06 AM on March 12, 2010

Hell convention in town.
posted by cashman at 11:07 AM on March 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've noticed this same behavior as well, and it'd be great if we could make it not happen.

At least in preview, the only way to make the output not contain tons of empty lines is to run the BLOCKQUOTE section basically inline with the preceding and following paragraphs.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:07 AM on March 12, 2010

We're all at a SXSW Interactive, a web conference. So support/updates will be sporadic this week while we're offline meeting with web folk.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:07 AM on March 12, 2010

Thanks, pb re: the extra UL thing. If any admin wants to close this thread, feel free to.

Just as an additional FYI, though, the fixes to the errors I was speaking about don't show when the post is rendered using the Preview button (in other words, the extra-lines problems show when the post is rendered in Preview mode) ... which is why I didn't catch the fact that this had been fixed when Previewing this MeTa post before posting it.
posted by WCityMike at 11:08 AM on March 12, 2010

ahh ok, I see. I'll make sure those changes are reflected in preview.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:09 AM on March 12, 2010

Amusingly enough, the reason I didn't catch the fact that this had been fixed is because I've been doing that paragraph-merge hack for so long that I've not tried it the "normal" way for a while; I was only reminded of the problem when putting together a really long comment recently that had LI tags. Anyway, thanks for the fix(es), whenever you guys did it. And sorry to bother you all while having fun in Austin.

Everybody else: FLAME PILLOW-FIGHT! *whoomf* ;)
posted by WCityMike at 11:11 AM on March 12, 2010

This is a test opening line.

This is a block quoted section and it appears two lines below the opening line above.

This is a closing line and it seems (in preview) to have no less than three empty lines between it and the blockquoted section.

Here is a screenshot of how this appears in preview.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:15 AM on March 12, 2010

Thanks for this thread, WCityMike - I, too, did not realize that it had been fixed in everything except preview!

Wait, that's pretty civil. I mean YOU SUCK.
posted by muddgirl at 11:15 AM on March 12, 2010

This will make it easier to have SQL scripts spit out already-formatted-for-MetaTalk comments containing lists and blockquoted things. Hooray!
posted by FishBike at 11:16 AM on March 12, 2010

ah, man, this has been bugging me a lot, too. thanks, wcitymike, for making this post as well as you have.

also thanks to pb for being open about it even though you're busy at SXSW.
posted by shmegegge at 11:20 AM on March 12, 2010

KokuRyu: Could we also bring back the blink tag?

Of course, if that really annoys someone, if they're using Firefox, they can just toggle browser.blink_allowed to false ...
posted by WCityMike at 11:31 AM on March 12, 2010

Along very similar lines, has anybody else found that when they include "small" text inside "blockquote", or vice-versa, the spacing between lines is sometimes quite large and sometimes nice and compact?

I tend to use this a lot for various datawankery thread comments, and it seems like even going back to look at the same comments later, the spacing has changed.
posted by FishBike at 11:31 AM on March 12, 2010

Of course, if that really annoys someone, if they're using Firefox, they can just toggle browser.blink_allowed to false ...

No! Because if you block browser blink then what if an advertiser is trying to use the blink tag for their advertising on a website? Then you've become a moral failure for taking that websites content without letting them display their ads the way they intend. You wouldn't want that, would you? No, you wouldn't.

eat at Ars Technica's
posted by cashman at 11:45 AM on March 12, 2010 [10 favorites]

my Preview of this post looks absolutely nothing like the final version of it,

Yeah, this is the main reason I don't use preview. Also if I use the non-live preview (i.e. I click the preview button) it often mangles the stuff in the box.
posted by DU at 12:00 PM on March 12, 2010

We're all at SXSW Interactive
But then who's the designated survivor¹? What if a small² asteroid hits Austin?

¹Having thought about it, I assume vacapinta is the designated survivor. But is he ready?
²If it were a large asteroid, MeFi business continuity would probably be the least of our worries.
posted by Electric Dragon at 12:27 PM on March 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Electric Dragon: ¹Having thought about it, I assume vacapinta is the designated survivor. But is he ready?

Yes, Matt gave him the designated survivor talk back in '08.
posted by WCityMike at 12:33 PM on March 12, 2010

Ok, having searched for an example of my earlier comment about line spacing, I noted that this thread looks different every time I load it, and the line spacing changes when I refresh the page. That's got to be a browser issue, doesn't it?
posted by FishBike at 12:37 PM on March 12, 2010

FishBike: Ok, having searched for an example of my earlier comment about line spacing, I noted that this thread looks different every time I load it, and the line spacing changes when I refresh the page. That's got to be a browser issue, doesn't it?

I think so. I've hit Reload (Skip Cache) three times and it's looked the same to me each time.
posted by WCityMike at 12:41 PM on March 12, 2010

While we're talking about blockquote, is there a reason we don't have a button for it?
posted by scalefree at 12:43 PM on March 12, 2010

You didn't tip the wonderchicken when you entered, did you? If you had, you'd have a blockquote button.

There is no cabal.
posted by languagehat at 12:51 PM on March 12, 2010

I think so. I've hit Reload (Skip Cache) three times and it's looked the same to me each time.

Yeah, it looks OK to me in IE7 even, so I'd flag my earlier comment as "never mind" if I could.

Oh, Firefox, why hast thou forsaken me?
posted by FishBike at 12:55 PM on March 12, 2010

If I owned SXSW it would be my policy to pronounce it "Sex Swuh" and to kick out people that called it something different.
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:34 PM on March 12, 2010

While we're talking about blockquote, is there a reason we don't have a button for it?

'cause it's a sign of sekret HTML skills, like the image tag.
posted by bonehead at 1:35 PM on March 12, 2010

No! Because if you block browser blink then what if an advertiser is trying to use the blink tag for their advertising on a website?

It was flashing and everything!
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:07 PM on March 12, 2010

Does it still add a blank line when the last bit of text is within blockquote tags?

Time to find out!

posted by Kattullus at 3:04 PM on March 12, 2010

Apparently it does.
posted by Kattullus at 3:04 PM on March 12, 2010

You know we're all in Austin Texas right now, right?

You left us home alone?! What should I tell the nice man from Yahoo Answers, who is at the door?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:06 PM on March 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I've been avoiding blockquote because of that formatting issue. So thanks for inadvertently ensuring we all know it's only a preview bug.

Also: We're all at a SXSW Interactive, a web conference. So support/updates will be sporadic this week while we're offline meeting with web folkepic ascii art threads all night long.
posted by davejay at 3:15 PM on March 12, 2010

Huh.

When you search for "ascii art" the google logo changes. :)
posted by zarq at 3:19 PM on March 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

What should I tell the nice man from Yahoo Answers, who is at the door?!

Tell him about that interesting thing he must see that we have down in the basement. Apologize for the fact that the lights don't work, and neglect to mention the missing stairs.

Then lock the door. It'll all work itself out in a couple of days.
posted by quin at 3:32 PM on March 12, 2010

Blink Tag excuse. You know I didn't really need a very good one.
posted by 517 at 3:49 PM on March 12, 2010

I think Metafilter should blink by default, and if you didn't want your post to blink you'd have to set the unblink tag.
posted by qvantamon at 4:28 PM on March 12, 2010

Then lock the door. It'll all work itself out in a couple of days.

Yes, but then....
posted by zarq at 4:48 PM on March 12, 2010

ZAMBONI!!!
posted by not_on_display at 8:23 PM on March 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

You didn't tip the wonderchicken when you entered, did you? If you had, you'd have a blockquote button.

'cause it's a sign of sekret HTML skills, like the image tag.

No, sure, I expected you guys to be assholes; that's par for the course. I was hoping to get a more meaningful answer from the mods though. It's a feature I'd like & I think it'd get a lot of use if we had it.
posted by scalefree at 9:45 PM on March 12, 2010

I don't think there's any particular reason we don't have it, really. Just didn't seem like something that's really needed, sort of the same as we've been feeling about a quote/reply feature.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:18 PM on March 12, 2010

web folk
How quaint.
posted by tellurian at 3:05 AM on March 13, 2010

flagging all lines using blink as noise

My eyes hate you all.
posted by mephron at 3:40 PM on March 13, 2010

Wait... blink still works? I'm using Chrome on Windows 7 and I see no blinks at all.
posted by Kattullus at 4:40 PM on March 13, 2010

"It's an asteroid the size of Austin, Mister President."
posted by mbrubeck at 6:49 PM on March 13, 2010

I'm pretty sure Chrome just flat-out doesn't implement the blink tag.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:06 PM on March 15, 2010