Bug with italics button

February 8, 2003 5:18 PM

Italics button inserts italics into text instead of comment box.
posted by hama7 to Bugs at 5:18 PM (23 comments total)

It's odd because the tags don't remain in the MetaFilter text, but the tags do not appear in the comment box.
posted by hama7 at 5:21 PM on February 8, 2003

what do you mean, into text? Into the text of the page? On which page?

Also, what browser and platform are you using?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:23 PM on February 8, 2003

seems ok on ie6-win2kpro. hama7, how does what you are seeing differ from this?
posted by quonsar at 6:14 PM on February 8, 2003

It's pretty annoying, and I've never seen it before just now.

It looks exactly like the quonsar link, but it's not appearing in the comment box at all, but in the text itself, both in metafilter and metatalk.

I tried to copy and paste quonsar's comment, and the italics tags went directly onto the grey (around his comment).
posted by hama7 at 6:24 PM on February 8, 2003

browser and platform, soldier.
posted by eddydamascene at 6:25 PM on February 8, 2003

windoze 2000, microsoft IE

Never a solitary problem before.
posted by hama7 at 6:26 PM on February 8, 2003

Besides the obvious, I mean.
posted by hama7 at 6:26 PM on February 8, 2003

hama7, did you have text in the body of the page selected at the time of clicking the button.

(on a semi related note, matt, yay for the tools in moz... i know they only recently finished cleaning up the related bugs... anyway you can get it to set the focus back into the nav bar similar to what I've done here? )
posted by 10sball at 6:29 PM on February 8, 2003

Yes, text was selected.
posted by hama7 at 6:32 PM on February 8, 2003

Ditto for the bold tags. I thought I would be doing everyone a fantastic favor, but it seems like I'm kind of alone on this one. Sorry.
posted by hama7 at 7:00 PM on February 8, 2003

nah.. don't think you're alone... but i'd have to get the old pc turned on to check... I think it has to do with the global selection object that usually gets used for these types of things in IE... I always thought it was a stupid way of going about things (that was directed at the browser and not the author). I'd have to do some searching to see if there's an easy way to check the scope of the selection and make sure it is in the textarea and not the other parts of the page... maybe matt knows
posted by 10sball at 7:07 PM on February 8, 2003

hama7, you did understand that cut and paste is a seperate operation from the italics button? what i mean is, after you have selected, copied and pasted into the editing box, then you must select (if not still selected from the paste) the desired text again within the editing box and use the button to insert tags. the buttons only work on selected items which are within the editing box. i was able to duplicate your experience only when text was selected which was outside of the editing area. you probably know all this but it's all i can think of to explain it. barring that, it must be some weird javascript artifact having to do with what 10sball is saying. for example, over at 9622.net they have something going on such that i cannot select any text from the page whatsoever. i can get either the entire page, top to bottom, or none at all. maddening, i tell's ya.
posted by quonsar at 9:01 PM on February 8, 2003

Thanks, quonsar. It's exactly like your screenshot. Exactly.

To make matters worse, even when nothing is selected outside the comments box (like now), I'm seeing italics tags appear directly on the MetaGray (and bold tags selected by the button).

But typed by hand is ok.

Thanks for your help.
posted by hama7 at 10:17 PM on February 8, 2003

Weird. I'll try out 10sball's code out tomorrow to see if it solves the problem.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:02 PM on February 8, 2003

Also, hama7, what version of IE are you using? (go to Help, then About Internet Explorer to see)

Is it IE 5, IE 5.5 or IE 6?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:03 PM on February 8, 2003

IE5.5 Thanks for the help.
posted by hama7 at 1:24 AM on February 9, 2003

(The problem that quonsar mentions about selection at a certain other site is an artifact of a known but unfixed IE bug, for which I will still inexplicably apologize, because I haven't bothered trying to find a workaround. I suggest a better browser, of which there are at least two, these days, in my humble.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:31 AM on February 9, 2003

I'm also noticing the effect as quonsar illustrates, using IE6 and WinXP.
Not really a problem for me though, since it edits something I can't save.
posted by friedrice at 7:01 AM on February 9, 2003

hama7 and quonsar, do the same things happen on 10sball's demo page?

If not, I'll just copy his functions over here.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:54 AM on February 9, 2003

mathowie, no problems at the 106ball page. It works excactly MetaFilter's did until about yesterday.
posted by hama7 at 2:52 PM on February 9, 2003

looks good matt. it does not happen there, and he has combined the copy/paste functionality so that after highlighting text on the page proper, you can hit the 'button' and the text is copied into the textbox with tags supplied. or is that the way it was supposed to work here but i never knew?
posted by quonsar at 2:54 PM on February 9, 2003

no quonsar, that's just a side effect of the same idiotic bug/behavior. I'm just making sure I redirect things back inside of the textarea before the javascript does the "paste".


I'd still like to see if i can check the scope of the selection and make sure its in the textbox instead of just forcing it later but I've got other fish to fry at the moment. If i ever get around to it down I'll be sure to let matt in on it.
posted by 10sball at 3:33 PM on February 9, 2003

is that the way it was supposed to work here but i never knew?

It did used to work that way on MetaFilter.

Thanks 10sball.

(Yow. "exactly like" above.)
posted by hama7 at 3:47 PM on February 9, 2003