Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

@BBeast Yeah, it seems relatively straightforward for me to transform WYSIWYG <-> HTML back and forth for when you want to fiddle with it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I know it's controversial which is why it would just exist as an experiment on the side.

IMO almost anything is better than the Guild's current editor. Even something simple like choosing a color from the picker and then realizing you want a different color is infuriating. And there's no undo/redo stack.

Just tonight I've almost implemented more features in my experimental editor than the Guild's editor has.



And the features all work with undo/redo and text-highlighting. It's actually pleasant to use. You can even copy HTML into it.

Seems promising so far. But there's a lot more work involved before I can evaluate it thoroughly.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Vec I've been holding off on editor features while experimenting with different editors, but I also don't want to stagnate the current editor in the "someday I'll replace it" limbo indefinitely. I'll have to draw the line soon and decide on what to do.

The editor is definitely the hardest aspect of the Guild.

I'm currently evaluating the possibility of building a WYSIWYG editor on top of the framework that Facebook built for its own products: draftjs.org

Cons:
- It's a WYSIWYG editor meaning that it can be frustrating if its rough edges are too rough. Ever create an element like a table or a list in an editor, yet no matter how many times you press ESC or Enter, you can't get out of it?
- Seems pretty hard to allow block elements (like Quotes and Hiders) to contain other block elements like more Quotes and Hiders, at least not without a real mastery of the Draft.js framework.
- Unknown mobile-friendliness.

Pros:
- Draft.js gives me control over the undo/redo stack. This is a classic forum-editor pain point where undo either doesn't work or it messes up your post more than it undoes anything.
- It's a WYSIWYG editor meaning that you don't write BBCode by hand. You can see what your post will look like without pressing "preview". The editor buttons are more powerful and it's better able to let you toggle a style on and off by selecting an element and clicking the button.
- I can integrate it with the Guild, like have a pop-up autocomplete box when you want to @Mention somebody, or allow you to click-and-drag an image into the post which uploads it to the Guild so that the image URL never breaks.

So far I have basic inline styles working in my dev environment:

- Colors
- Fonts
- The start of a @Mention autocomplete system

I also have some basic block elements working:

- Headers: H1, H2, H3
- Alignment: Left, Center, Right
- Lists: Unordered, Ordered

And these features work pretty well so far. You can undo/redo your changes. If you put your cursor on an orange H1 block, the orange button and the H1 button light up.

But so far, while experimenting with implementing Quote and Hider blocks, it seems like a challenge to allow blocks to contain other blocks since I'm still learning. I may have to just constrain block elements (Quotes, Hiders) such that they can only contain inline styles (colors, fonts, @Mentions, maybe headers, etc). At least at the start.

Ex: I reckon clicking the Quote button on somebody's post will have to strip out all of their block elements and only show text.

I hope to get a demo up and running online so yall can check it out an tell me if it seems worth pursuing.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Grimhildr Thanks for digging into it.

Yeah, some of the one-star reviews for the add-on say that it'll make parts of dynamic forms disappear and stuff. Too bad.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@ArenaSnow I've noticed this with some other avatars as well.



For whatever reason, the image resizer breaks on some gifs. I'll add it to my TODO list. Might have an easy fix or something.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@BingTheWing No. Though the image will max out at 100% post width.

Ideally the Guild would have a nice drag-and-drop image solution that rehosts it and lets you resize it.

@Grimhildr Does that mean you can replicate the issue in a fresh Firefox profile window / incognito window (whichever way you can create a window without add-ons)?

If not, then another possibility is that, since Firefox add-ons auto-update, an older add-on could be causing problems now that it wasn't in the past.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Odin Yeah since they make it too hard to @mention and interfere with some other subsystems.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Odin Okay, I implemented username changes.

roleplayerguild.com/users/buddha redirects to your new profile url roleplayerguild.com/users/odin

I'll also have to add "previous usernames" to the user profile that should show up for at least a few months after a username change so people know who you are.

Username changes are limited to one every three months, though right now you must ask a moderator to do it for you. And if you want a banned/dead account's username, you must ask me so I'm the only one that can recycle.

I coded it so that you can change your own username, but the only thing stopping me from enabling it is that Guildbot currently doesn't have a good way to syncing username changes to Discord.

The system is somewhat complex in that the forum now tracks historical usernames and whether or not they are recyclable. If a user cannot be found, the forum also checks the username history table to see if an old username should redirect to a new username.

So there might be some bugs. If you want a username change, just PM me.

Looking for Some Dominant Ladies? [F/m]

@lycanroc Welcome.

Your post tripped the spam-detection system for some reason, but I reversed it. Sorry if you noticed and were confused.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Grimhildr Yeah, looks like pagemod.js is related to Firefox extensions.

The question is whether or not the Guild is doing something weird that interferes with Firefox in general.

I'll use Firefox as my daily Guild browser to see if I run into anything myself.