HTML posting issues

December 21, 2004 6:39 AM

Maybe it's been covered recently, but bold, italic and link buttons don't work for me. I logged out, deleted cookies, etc. Firefox .8
posted by ashbury to Bugs at 6:39 AM (20 comments total)

The first thing I would do is upgrade to 1.0. Even if the buttons don't work for all users with .8, (or even anything <1.0) it wouldn't make sense for Matt to make a change to fix pre-release version of a browser, especially when the release version is available. (Which isn't a snark. I don't want to make another "hate" list.)
posted by jpoulos at 6:52 AM on December 21, 2004

The buttons did work up until the last time I posted, whenever that was. Anyway, I upgraded and that seems to have fixed the problem. It seems as though I'm continuously upgrading with those mozilla programs. There's now a firefox 1.7.5, for example. When does it end? It seems odd to me that the buttons aren't available across a large spectrum of browsers - I don't think it's that hard to code. Anyway, what do I know. Thanks, jpoulos, for the advice.
posted by ashbury at 7:13 AM on December 21, 2004

That's Mozilla 1.7.5, not Firefox. Slightly different products, as Mozilla is a "suite" of different apps (browser, mail, chat, etc), like Netscape Communicator was. And Firefox is just a web browser, like IE.

Version updating will never end. I would argue that frequent updates are a advantage of Firefox over IE. Although transparent automatic updating sure would be nice.
posted by Plutor at 7:43 AM on December 21, 2004

They've never worked (nor appeared) in Safari either, but I always blamed Safari and trusted a future release would fix this in the future (the text mod links neither work nor appear in Movable Type, either, using Safari fwiw, so I think it's fair to bame the browser).
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:59 AM on December 21, 2004

Ashbury, if you're using Firefox .8, you might be able to auto-update your browser without having to do wth uninstall-download-reinstall shuffle. If you go to Preferences > Advanced > Software Updated > Check Now it will check to see any updated to the browser AND any extensions you've got installed then update them for you.

I'm not 100% sure this was fully operational at .8, or that it will magically take you from .8 to 1.0, but it's worth a look. Regardless, it's definitely worth upgrading to 1.0, just to be outta beta (some security bugs were fixed between then and now, too...)

FYI, the bold italic and link tags work just fine in Firefox 1.0 on the Mac...
posted by jimray at 8:03 AM on December 21, 2004

The tags are easily typed by hand, and become almost automatic after a while:

<i> to open an italic tag, </i> to close it.
<b> to open a bold tag, </b> to close it.
<a href="http:www.yourlinkhere.com"> to open a link tag and specify the link, and </a> to end the clickable text. (so the whole specification of a link is <a href="http//:www.yourlinkhere.com">text to click</a>)

And the one the oldtimers and Matt don't like:

<img src="http://www.website.com/picture.jpg"> for posting images.
posted by Doohickie at 10:31 AM on December 21, 2004

I've noticed that MeFi uses <strong> </strong> for bold, and <em> </em> for italics.
posted by Bugbread at 11:28 AM on December 21, 2004

Did my italics and bold show up in my thread above? I don't think it makes a difference, and i and b are shorter than em and strong. But if I have to switch, I guess I will.
posted by Doohickie at 11:44 AM on December 21, 2004

while em and strong are perhaps more "standards compliant" than b and i, i think most browsers treat them exactly the same. no?

the link button alone is reason to upgrade from Safari to Firefox on the Mac. (though the find box has become grating.)
posted by mrgrimm at 12:05 PM on December 21, 2004

the link button alone is reason to upgrade from Safari to Firefox on the Mac

But the built-in spell-check keeps me in Safari.

[I just realized I'm doing this in Windows and didn't bother using the buttons].
posted by birdherder at 12:43 PM on December 21, 2004

Doohickie, mrgrimm:

Yes, <i> and <b> work as well. I didn't mean to say that they didn't, the bit about "em" and "strong" was just an observation.
posted by Bugbread at 12:53 PM on December 21, 2004

I'm torn between Safari and Firefox...

Firefox pros: formatting buttons in MeFi, power searching in address bar, rss bookmarks, find box

Safari pros: built-in spellchecking, copy-image-to-clipboard, close-buttons on individual tabs

I'm hoping the next release of either of them will adopt what the other one has.
posted by Robot Johnny at 2:38 PM on December 21, 2004

Robot Johnny: Firefox has copy-image-to-clipboard as well (by default, no extensions needed). Just for reference.
posted by Bugbread at 3:43 PM on December 21, 2004

bugbread, am I too dumb to find it? Could it be that I'm using the OS X version?
posted by Robot Johnny at 4:06 PM on December 21, 2004

Robot Johnny - Drag an image from a web page to your desktop. I know you can get a copy of it easily that way.

Also, as for em and strong tags vs b and i tags, I'd go for the former, since, from a standards standpoint, em and strong fit more with, for example, the effects of a text-to-speech browser (for the blind).
posted by armoured-ant at 6:56 PM on December 21, 2004

"strong" and "em" are more-preferred over "b" and "i" because they represent structural data, not presentation data. Part of the push towards a properly designed ML/CSS divide.
posted by Plutor at 7:04 PM on December 21, 2004

But i and b are shorter.
posted by Doohickie at 7:38 PM on December 21, 2004

armoured-ant -- sometimes I like to bring an image from the web directly into Photoshop and not have to take that extra step (and not have a file cluttering up my desktop that I'll have to delete later). Safari's copy-image-to-clipboard is a lifesaver.

As for em and strong, I understand their use as non-presentational, but I agree with Doohickie, i and b are just a heckuva lot easier.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:13 PM on December 21, 2004

I didn't say they were easier, I said they were shorter. Are you tryin' to start somethin'?!?!!!!??11!!!?
posted by Doohickie at 9:58 PM on December 21, 2004

This was an incredibly embarassing issue for me when I first signed up. No bold, italics, or links, and everything I posted ended with a question mark.

Just upgrade your browser. Let metafilter be your guiding light, rather than your current browser. Go by what metafilter tells you, and all will be right in the world.
posted by interrobang at 10:32 PM on December 21, 2004