whats up with the Preview...View ??

[Mirko]

When I preview my posts, the window is sliver thin?? any way to adjust this?

Mirko

 

[Dan Clark]

Mirko,

I'm sorry you're having issues.  I've never see this.  No problems here.  Can you get a screen shot of this and post?

Regards,

Dan.

 

[Mirko]

Dan,
Thanks for the help,Hope you can see this picture, its kinda blurry.

Mirko

 

[Mirko]

I'll try again full screen.

Mirko

 

[Forrest Anderson]

I think the clue is the wording of the text in Mirko's first screenshot - it is a continuous line of the word "Help" with no spaces between the words. Previewing what is essentially one very long and solid line of characters, seems to mess up the forum software.

I can replicate the problem by doing the following:

Prepare a similar message (one continuous chunk of characters without a space between them) which takes up about 3 lines of the Post Reply message preparation pane:

Click the preview button

Since there are no breaks, the preview pane does not know how to split the long line of text into different lines, so it tries to display it on one line.

In order to display it on one line, the software creates a horizontal scrollbar in the preview window so that you can scroll from left to right along the line:

Once this horizontal scrollbar has been created, the preview window will remain narrow top to bottom, even if the continuous line of text is deleted and replaced by normal next with spaces and line breaks:

One way to reset things to normal is to refresh the window in your browser (press F5 in Internet Explorer on a Windows machine) which will delete all your text and allow you to start from scratch. Another method is to exit from the forum and come back again.

In summary, when the user creates a long line of characters which necessitates the creation of a horizontal scrollbar in the preview pane, a bug in the forum software fixes the vertical size of the preview window for the remainder of that message creation session.

Forrest

 

[Matthew Schenker]

Very interesting...

Thank you Forrest for figuring this out.  I'm glad to know that the cause is something that will very rarely come up.  But still, it's a bug.  I will report it to the Simple Machines developers today and see if there is a fix for it.

In the meantime, members should write posts that have some spaces in them!!

Matthew

 

[Mirko]

Hey guys,

It happens when I type normal paragraphs too,
in the post I'm typing right now, when I preview
I get the same problem.

If you look at my second screen shot, take notice that on the right side of the
preview box, there is no scroll bar, its missing.
In the past it worked fine, so I had a thought... could it be my browser thats doing it?
I'm running the Safari 3 bata on a Mac, anyone else seeing this.
Im not sure when I started seeing it, if it was pre upgrade or not, but its been a couple weeks for sure.

oh well no biggie.

Mirko

 

[bruegf]

The lack of wrapping on a long line of text that doesn't contain any white space (space, tab, linefeed) is not a bug but rather the way all browsers are designed to display text.  Rather than wrap, the browser will display a horizontal scrollbar.

Fred

 

[Forrest Anderson]

I'm running the Safari 3 bata on a Mac, anyone else seeing this.

Hah - I missed the little Mac icon at the top left of your browser window, but the image was pretty small, so that's my excuse!

Although I have access to machines with different versions of Windows, running various browsers, I don't have a Mac to help with the problem.

If you look at my second screen shot, take notice that on the right side of the
preview box, there is no scroll bar, its missing.

There's a white bar at the right-hand side of your preview box though - could that be the makings of a vertical scroll bar?

In my experiments, I got a vertical scroll bar (visible in my third screenshot) when the narrow preview box couldn't display all the text, and I think you've got one too, although it's so small it hasn't got any arrows.

It happens when I type normal paragraphs too,
in the post I'm typing right now, when I preview
I get the same problem.

In the past it worked fine, so I had a thought... could it be my browser thats doing it?
Im not sure when I started seeing it, if it was pre upgrade or not, but its been a couple weeks for sure.

If you close your browser (perhaps even reboot the computer), start the browser, and then try to write a normal message (with spaces!) from scratch, do you still get a narrow preview box?

Forrest

 

[Forrest Anderson]

The lack of wrapping on a long line of text that doesn't contain any white space (space, tab, linefeed) is not a bug but rather the way all browsers are designed to display text.  Rather than wrap, the browser will display a horizontal scrollbar.

Absolutely. The bug is when you then delete that continuous text and write some normal text and ask for another preview. The preview window is now locked in its vertical size to just a few rows deep.

Once the preview window has displayed a horizontal scrollbar, the preview window is no longer able to resize itself, even if the horizontal scrollbar is no longer required.

Forrest

 

[bruegf]

Sorry, I missed that part.  That does sound like a bug.

Fred

 

[Mirko]

  There's a white bar at the right-hand side of your preview box though - could that be the makings of a vertical scroll bar?

Forrest,

If you look closely at the white area, that is definitely where the scroll bar should be, but its missing. Scroll bars on the Mac are represented in blue, like the one in the body of the post I was typing. Hope this helps.

Mirko

 

[Michael Kellough]

I'm running the Safari 3 bata on a Mac,

Maybe it is just a beta bug. Have you tried Firefox?

 

[Dave Rudy]

I'm running Beta3 Safari and dont have the problem.  Wouldnt you rather troubleshoot tools than computers?????

Dave

 

[Matthew Schenker]

I have reported this to the SMF community.  They are still looking into it, but this appears to be a problem with the member's local computer, rather than the software.
Matthew