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| I have worked over the last few weeks on the issues with IE. Most if not all are solved. However when I talked to an author, who is no longer on the site, they made a good point to why they left. It was because they could not use MS Word formatted HTML documents to post to the site. This issue bothered me a bit, because I got to thinking what if we are loosing more stories and authors because of the issue. With that in mind I setout to make that feature work, and to allow it to work securely on the site. After three weeks I have come up with some questions, and a few options.
I choose the latter, and the vote link is HERE. I have tested the MS Word HTML issue, I was able to post a story using MS Word HTML on the test site, with both HTML code in the story showing as is, and with the formatted HTML as apart of the story code with no issues. The only thing that bothered me was the errors IE gives on each page because TinyMCE is turned on. Are you the author willing to overlook random errors related to page layout in IE in order to use this option? Are you even using MS Word HTML to make your story? What is it about posting with MS Word HTML that failed the most for you? I know there will be a bit of a conversation about this in the comment section, for that reason I will delete comments if it gets too big. Nothing personal just a way to keep the database running smooth. Before you ask, yes we have heard mention of a SIYE forums, and no we have not gotten further than mentions. If it happens you will know :-) Please refrain from taking the comments on this post too far off topic. Your opinions on this issue matter to me, and I need all the feedback I can get. Thanks Steve Ragan(AdminQ)Technical Development and DesignSIYE |
| AdminQ on 2006.04.23 - 01:21PM () |
Comments
Potter47 came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 02:12PM to say:
I just use Microsoft Works Word Processor, its HTML works fine... It's not that different from Word, anyway.
Viridian came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 03:20PM to say:
Having to hand-code my italics tags was a major issue for me for quite a while. (Until Jeconais created a script just for sites like this. Send Tim an attaboy.) If I have to spend a lot of time massaging text specifically for this site... well, I'd rather spend that time writing, sorry. It's not such an issue for me now, but other people may be in that situation.
AdminQ came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 03:41PM to say:
Tim wrote a script? Do you know where to get it? I sent him an email and it bounced. Must have done something bad in a past life, because my email hates me today. Viridian can you share a little more info about it, use the helpdesk if its something that shouldnt be posted here for the world to see. Pretty please
J Daisy came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 04:00PM to say:
I'm in the same camp as lecook4...I have no problems copying and pasting from MS Word...the only problem it presents is that some things like quotes that I begin stories with aren't centered. I'm a relatively new user but as of now, I have no problem with the formatting on this site.
Athea came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 05:30PM to say:
Thanks to my great beta, I now know how to post on this site. I hate to admit it, but my computer illiteracy made changing formats difficult for me. No that I know what I'm doing, I really don't mind having to insert the italics tags in order to post. I would rather have to do that than read pages with weird character insertions due to errors in posting. (I don't know what the errors would be like, but those are annoying.) Thanks for your hard work trying to improve an already great site.
HPwizardGirl came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 06:19PM to say:
I'm new, but so far I haven't had any problems changing my story formats on here.
HeatherWeasley_lover came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 06:24PM to say:
I am so glad that someone brought that up. It really is a pain in the neck when you have something and it will not work with MS Word HTML. Seeing as how I don't have Arachnaphilia on this computer I have to use the HTML with MS Word. So it is really annoying when you go and it and then come to find out the Website won't accept it. -.- So yes, I am thankful that someone told you about it. :)
cwarbeck came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 07:17PM to say:
I've gotten used to using the HTML tags, so it's not really that big a deal. There are other sites though, that don't use them anymore and instead use a format similar to MS word, in that they have the buttons for italics, bold, underline, center, align, justify, etc. That one threw me off, because I had gotten used to inserting the HTML tags, but the MS Word format did make it easier to copy and paste from my original work stored in my hard drive.
DQBunny came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 08:57PM to say:
I agree with cwarbeck completely. I no longer use anything Windows-related for my writing because it is guarenteed to screw things up. By saving my stories in .RTF (real text format), if I upload an actual file to most archives, it will keep the formatting. For SIYE, I always copy from my original file to a random TextEdit file, then insert the hard coding. It's good knowledge to have and an excellent way to proof your stories one more time for mistakes. After the post is successful, I simply delete the TextEdit file.
AdminQ came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 09:11PM to say:
cwarbeck The thing you speak of is TinyMCE we have that here on this site, but I disabled it because it screwed with IE. Every time I looked when it was enabled it wasnt working. I got someof the code for it fixes but it still throws the odd error, which is why I posted what I did.
cwarbeck came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 09:29PM to say:
Steve, I didn't know it was called that. LOL. Anyway, like DQBunny, I think inserting the HTML tags manually does provide a way of proofreading your stories one last time before actually posting it. And besides, no one actually does the majority of their writing directly into the text box when uploading their stories, do they? I've personally never had a problem with copying and pasting from my original Word document, so if TinyMCE isn't compatible with IE (which I use), I'd rather not have it.
rufiel came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 11:11PM to say:
I haven't posted a story in a while, but always when I write for this site I use WordPad and write the HTML tags while I'm writing the story. Hasn't bothered me at all, it's a bit boring to change all the HTML tags to... Don't know what's it called but it's [i]these[/i] things, but I just do that before I post them elsewhere and has nothing to do with this. Don't know why I wrote it. But anyways, it's all good fun to insert the HTML tags manually.
asad_asif_86 came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 12:55AM to say:
I have uploaded all of Abraxan's fics on this site and on fanficauthors.net. Out of both sites, fanficauthors.net is much better as far as story submissions are concerned.The chapters can be submitted in Word HTML and they work brilliantly. For posting stories here, on the previous version of SIYE, I had to manually edit the TXT files with the allowed html tags. It was a great annoyance for me. Anyone who has read Abraxan's fics here will notice that there are no italics in the chapters. The reason is that it is too much work for me to manually go and add each italic tag. Jeconais/Tim has made it child's play to upload a fic to his site and I would easily give him a 10/10 for it.
Grand Poobah came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 01:24AM to say:
I have mixed feelings about this. My experiences go like this. I can post my stories by using WordPad and then writing in the Html. However, that takes a lot of time. Partly that's because I use bold and italics a fair bit. However, I have found numerous times that efiction just barfs when I give it what I want, and some tags which are supposed to work simply don't, or at least they don't work reliably. So, that means I have to upload the plain text, and then make numerous "edit" sessions to add a little html at a time until the whole chapter is done. On the other hand, if it was possible to cut and paste from Word, the job would be much, much easier. Like the author who left, I do consider whether I want to post other stores based upon the time needed to go through all the hoops. I guess my concern is about half and half....half for the html issues, and half for the non-working aspects of efiction.
AdminQ came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 02:18AM to say:
asad_asif_86 Im glad Tim amde it that easy, however I will have to deal with TinyMCE because his stie tells ppl that the code is not public, so I would never have the chance to use it. Another issue for me, is TinyMCE offers not a single bit of support unless you pay to have something done, and then it goes into the next release. So I pay to have issues fixed, and others get it fro free when the release a patch off of my request. The only real dev level support is a serious bug which the issues on IE are not considered.
Rosebeth came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 01:03PM to say:
I write exclusively in Word but I don't use Word HTML. It's never really been an issue for me to post here. I just save my file as a rtf and it loads fine. It would be lovely, if I could just load from Word, whether or not it's Word HTML, but the extra two steps to convert to a rft file, isn't a factor that would keep me from posting.
Mirloc came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 04:00PM to say:
I don't use Word, I write in Open Office, and hand code the HTML into the story as I write, I log ago gave up on direct uploads and just copy/paste now, and deal with the double spacing issues as they come up.
ChickenIsGood came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.24 - 07:25PM to say:
I just write the html tags on word while I'm writing. It really takes about the same time to write as is does to set as italics. If I want a clean non-html tagged I just preview the post here, and copy and paste back to word with all the bolds, italics, and underlines in place.
PhoenixAeternum came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.25 - 12:51AM to say:
I write in Word. I insert the markups, but in the case of some stories I beta, which need the markups inserted, I just open the search menu in Word and hold CTRL-I to find italics. Just put the code before the word, then add it again after the word. Just keep doing that, and all's well. I then copy and paste into Notepad, then just upload that file. It's simple enough.
Sir Ollivander came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.25 - 05:13PM to say:
I have no problem with MS-WORD. I write my story in WORD and save it as .rtf (Rich Text Format) instead of a WORD .doc. It comes out fine.
AdminQ came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.25 - 08:54PM to say:
Sir Olli When you do it in RTF do you have the format tags written in to the story?
cori_b came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.26 - 12:17PM to say:
you know, I have always written in word doc. Always,and I have never seen any problem with it- As far as html goes, well... I just put them in where they are needed. so on and so forth
KEDme came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.26 - 11:23PM to say:
For a long time I just posted without itlaics, but that was a big problem for me because so much of my story was dependent on the italics to set off dream sequences or special speech (ie. from inside the mind). One day one of my reviewers told me the secret of including the html tags in the text, and since then I do it by hand. I admit, it is a pain. But I do it anyway because I love this site and I's much rather post a complete document than an uncomplete document. However, it there is an easier and less time consuming way to post I'mm all for it. But I'm not giving up Word. It's too hard to make the switch to another program at this point, and since it've got this method down and it's working I'll keep on until I learn a different way. That's my 2 cents worth...
pankie001 came out of the woodwork on 2006.06.06 - 04:45AM to say:
Hello! I don't know where can I ask my question but I decided to go here instead. When writing a story, how can you make the font italic and bold? I'm just new with this thing that's why I'm not familiar with having avatars, typing url and html whatever. can you give me some ideas how can I do it? thanks so much!
lecook4 came out of the woodwork on 2006.04.23 - 01:56PM to say:
I am a big MS Word user, since it goes back and forth from home to work, and I really thought it would be a hassle to change formats, but it really is no big deal. I have a text program that, all I do is copy it from Word to the text program. It takes everything just fine and then I copy that to SIYE. It takes all of two seconds. I must admit that I never tried posting with MS Word HTML so I don't know the issues with it, but it isn't that much more difficult to post in text.