Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

I do not know how many times this has been brought up, but I would like to discuss about the topic.
I was wondering why the forums don't have a "preview" button for before posting to double check if everything would be correct when a user posts whatever s/he wanted to post. I just kinda found it a bit silly that the forums lacked a preview button, but even if there is an edit button. Why can't we have both? It would provide users a chance to double check before making, or editing a post in case of an accidental problem, like unintentional textile.

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I do understand we have one programmer, and I do thank James for all his hard work.

It would provide users a chance to double check before making, or editing a post in case of an accidental problem, like unintentional textile.

That's basically the problem, as that's where it stops. Double checking for your grammar or other stuff does not require a preview button, as you can easily reread what you just typed. The only thing you could use it for is checking if you didn't make some accidental mistakes with your html or textile.

But nonetheless, sounds like a good idea. Regardless of its limitations, I'm sure people would love such a feature.

I suggested this ages ago, sadly just not on this forum and only to one person.

Point is, why not? It helps with bulk posts with or without textile and other coding as you can see what it's going to be posted as, rather than what it is in the post box area.

Sure you can just double check, but for the only forums I've been on where you can use HTML and even Textile, I'm surprised that it doesn't even have a preview button.

Right. Also, most people use Google Chrome, or Firefox which both have a built in spell-check.

Double checking for your grammar or other stuff does not require a preview button, as you can easily reread what you just typed.

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Actually, I'd argue that. For longer posts, you can't see most of what you've written (without a lot of scrolling, that is), so it's hard to make sure that most of your sentences are grammatically sound. That's very important for posts where you're trying to make an argument where every point and route in your logic is crucial.

Personally, I often edit my sentences as I type them, so I'll remove a word here or there, but will forget to structure the rest of the sentence. So the sentence will no longer make any sense.

It's not crucial, but it's certainly convenient. It seems to be a basic function of most forums, so I think it's suitable for this one as well.

I pay attention to my grammar and spelling when I tl;dr, so I don't really need a preview button for that. However, a preview button would be a godsend for textile. I can't count the number of times where I've been pleased with a post, only to post it, discover that my textile was off/I missed a single character/my image link was broken. The other day, I was trying to make a pair of fake HTML tags, thought the code was right, and then spent 10 minutes editing and reediting before just getting rid of the tags entirely, because the real textile and html codes weren't functioning like I needed them to. Having a preview button would have prevented me from having an unfinished post up for ten minutes.

I agree with the fact that a preview button would be really nice for longer posts so you can check if you've made any mistakes in writing or in HTML code or Textile.

Shorter posts, including those with code are fine with being quickly edited but for posts with quite a few links/buttons/images on them, it would be really helpful.


Hopefully this can be implemented on KYM forum software without too much work. Certain forum software (eg. SMF and SMF2.0) are a pain to work with and will see certain words as keywords for code, etc

I always type the HTML or Textile codes straight into my post rather than copy-pasting from the textile thread, and it's a nuisance to have to edit my post when I screw something up. So a preview button would be nice in that aspect.

I'm not much of a tl;dr poster, and I always read my posts as I go along, but little things can get missed. However, I always read my posts after making them, so if I see any grammar or spelling errors, I can pluck them out in the seconds following my making the post. So in my case, that's not an issue. However, for people who regularly make longer posts like Verbose or Brucker, such a feature could be helpful.

On a slightly unrelated note: KYM could just hire another programmer, couldn't they? I'm sure James wouldn't mind at all if he had somebody to help him out.

On a slightly unrelated note: KYM could just hire another programmer, couldn’t they? I’m sure James wouldn’t mind at all if he had somebody to help him out.

I figure that Cheezburger could pull that off, but considering that KYM is still running, I highly doubt that they'd clear another position. I don't know James' salary, but they'd have to give a reason for why they need another position and why they'd have to spend money on that position.

If you're speaking about KYM without Cheezburger, then I know they don't make enough money to hire a new person on its own dime (but those dimes are likely going to Cheezburger anyway.)

That's a good point, I suppose my post was just a little "what if" thought I had.

as a person who'se never used a Textile-based post/comment system before, this would be really, really nice. i'm still trying to figure out textile (just learned how to do my own quotes today, lol), so being able to preview everything would be awesome.

it'd also give me a place to practice and experiment too, since i don't really know of anywhere else to try things out. the lack of a way to preview posts is half the reason why i still have never really spent any time in the KYM Forums.