A few small changes.

[Gumboots]

Have fixed the Lightbox settings so that inline attachments will now open in the Lightbox, instead of loading a new page with the full-size image. Have also removed the old "Quoted image as thumbnail" extension since it conflicts with Lightbox, and Lightbox does the same job anyway.

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Also: the cute little images on the posting/editing page buttons have gone too. Reason is that the updates on that extension are looking dodgey at the moment, and I'll need to update the forum software very soon (sometime in the next week) so cute little images have to go. Might as well go now so you can get used to it.

Note that I can probably come up with code of my own that does the same job and doesn't require an extension (CSS trickery FTW) but that's not a high priority at the moment.

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Last one: the quick style changer at the right side of the header is also looking very dodgey for updates, so that one has to go too. This means if you are not logged in you will be stuck with the forum's default style. That's currently Prosilver, which I hate, so I'll come up with something better as a default as soon as I can. If an updated version of the quick style extension becomes available later, I will reinstall it then.

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Aha! Temporary workaround: if you aren't logged in and you want to look around the boards but not be using Prosilver, you can add the style id you want to the end of the page url.

For example, this will give you Aero:

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http://hawkdawg.com/forums/index.php?style=45

And this will give you Prosilver Dark:

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http://hawkdawg.com/forums/index.php?style=46

Note that these aren't permanent, but they will stick while you have the forum open. I can add a link to these somewhere later.

[Gumboots]

Ok, got it sorted. There's now a "Change style..." link where the old style changer thing used to be. You can use it to select your preferred style if you want to look around, but don't want to bother logging in. It only shows when you aren't logged in.

Once you log in the style you have set in your User Control Panel preferences will take over, so I don't think the quick changer is necessary then. People tend to pick a style and stick with it.

If anyone particularly wants the new quick changer showing when they are logged in I can arrange that, but do note that it's not a permanent setting like the old changer extension, or like your UCP settings. It will only stick while you have the forum open. In other words, once you navigate way from the forum you are effectively resetting to the forum default (ie: Prosilver, at the moment).

[Gumboots]

I've made a change to the horizontal rule BBC. It now works with or without a closing tag. Either of these will give the same result:

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[hr]
[hr][/hr]

This will make typing hr's faster and easier.

I've also added subscript and superscript tags so you can write things like E=mc² and CO₂.

And, you can now add FontAwesome icons in posts. These are the same icons that are used for buttons around the forum.

trophylinkeyefast-forwardgavelcoffeemusic

A PDF cheat sheet for the icon set is attached. You just use whatever the icon name is, minus the "fa-" at the beginning. So to use the fa-paypal icon you type paypal between the tags, like this: paypal

And the off-topic tag has been tweaked for looks (the old one didn't work on the dark styles). I'll do further tweaks later to get better matches to all styles, but for now they look like this...

Off-Topic:

Tokens are placeholders for user input. The input will be validated only if it matches the corresponding definition. If needed, you can number them by adding a number as the last character between the braces, e.g. {TEXT1}, {TEXT2}.

[Hawk]

Cool! I like the new hr code.

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The superscript and subscript are a nice addition too, but that cheat sheet for FA sure is expansive.

[Gumboots]

Yes it's a bit bonkers. I might make a shorter list of the more likely ones at some point.

Really I just added it because I ran across that code while I was looking for other stuff, and I thought it was kinda fun. I also might want to use some non-standard icons in the interface coding (like the paintbrush Aero uses for its colour changer). Having them available as BBC should make me more familiar with the set. Nobody else has to use it, and having it available doesn't do any harm.

[Hawk]

I'm not complaining; just a surprised at the list.

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I still haven't got used to not going to the drop down menu for unread posts, as much as I like it this way.

[Gumboots]

Hey what do people think of doing attachments like this? IOW, automatically sit in a row instead of stacking down the page.

Naturally they'll still break to two or more rows if your screen/window is narrow enough, but there's no sane way of avoiding that.

[Hawk]

No more in-line attachments? frown-o (hand-o-leftFont Awesome frown and finger )

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I must confess, using the Font Awesome is kind'a cool but scrolling through that massive list is a wee bit of a deterrent.

[Gumboots]

Eh wot? Those photos of choofers are inline attachments. They're just inline in a line, instead of "inline" (ie: inside the post content) but stacked vertically. Here's another picture of the same post but with more text added.

IOW, if you post two or three images as inline attachments, without text between them, they will sit in a row instead of stacking vertically. If you post one image, by itself, it will still sit between any text you want to put above and below it. So this way is just saving some scrolling when you have consecutive images with nothing between them.

And yeah, I agree about the icons. Fun, if you can find the one you want, but the whole kaboodle really is a bit over the top.

[Hawk]

Ah! OK! Thanks! I completely misunderstood the image thing. I do like it.

[Gumboots]

While I'm on a roll...
I've always preferred having the poster details on the left, and the buttons after the post (but above the sig and attachments). I figure I always read the post before deciding what to do about it, so buttons at the start doesn't make a lot of sense. Ok, for short posts, but a tad daft for longer ones.

And the default phpBB thing of having the av, etc off to the right always feels slightly odd. Not quite natcheral. On the left feels more like home, for some reason. So this is easy to do. It doesn't even require any markup hacks. The whole thing can be done with CSS on the default markup.

[RulerofRails]

Wow, you have made almost 1,200 posts on a test site? How much testing have you done?

I'm fine with inline images like that. Would this do anything for objects "eating" up a couple returns below then when you try to format around them?

I'm used to the details on the right here. Personally I don't think it's a big deal after I grow accustomed. Do you still have the test site up like Hawk did? I seem to have lost the link over the times. Maybe I can get a better idea looking there.

[Gumboots]

The eating of line breaks seems to be something "helpful" in the phpBB core code. I suppose they were thinking too many line breaks aren't good, so they'd babysit people. Not sure where it is at the moment, but can probably find out by asking. I agree it would be nice to eliminate it, and just let people make the number of line breaks they want without having to guess.

I haven't actually made that many posts on the test site. What I did was use a truncated database backup from this site as the basis for the test site. The test site has had a lot of old posts and topics and non-active members dropped from it, as well as most of the remaining member's personal information (stored PM's, etc). So what you're seeing there is basically a truncated record of my posting on this site, plus a dozen or so extra test posts.

I've set the test site directory to password protected, mostly because we were getting a bit hammered by bots for a while and I wanted to save bandwidth. I'll PM you the password so you can take a look.

[Gumboots]

I've added another BBC tag. This one is called "clear", and what it does is force a clear line break before or after any inline images, etc. If you click the button in the full editor it will make the code like this:

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[clear][/clear]

The closing tag is just there because that's how phpBB needs it to be defined. If you are typing it manually, you only have to type the first bit for it to work. Like this:

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[clear]

This will work even if you don't leave any space in the editor between the clear tag and other content. You can smush it all up together in the editor, and you'll still get a nice clean line break where you want it.

[Hawk]

OK! I have to try out this new clear tag.

Pic 1:

Pic 2:

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So it looks like you can run it all in one line, like this

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Pic 1:[clear][attachment=0]DV Map.png[/attachment][/clear]Pic 2:[clear][attachment=1]bcgmap.png[/attachment][/clear]

and the clear tag will place stuff on separate lines but not add extra line breaks in.
So doing it like above or like this

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Pic 1:
[clear][attachment=0]DV Map.png[/attachment][/clear]
Pic 2:
[clear][attachment=1]bcgmap.png[/attachment][/clear]

results in the same post look.

You still have to add more line breaks to add more space between the stuff vertically, if you want, correct?

[Gumboots]

Yup, although I could change it to make any size gap that's useful. At the moment it just throws this into the markup:

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Pic 1:<div class="bbc_clear" style="clear: both; height: auto;"></div><div class="inline-attachment">
			
				<dl class="thumbnail">

Which defaults to a height of zero. By defining the class as .bbc_clear {height: 1em} you'd get a clear gap that high. I had thought just a basic clear might be more useful overall, but it's easy to change. The main use for it will be when we go ahead with having inline attachments in a row. That needs something handy to force a line break to following text. Two carriage returns will still work there, but I figured having something extra could be good.

I did manage to find some discussion about phpBB eating the first line break after inline attachments. Apparently it's due to a bug in the core code somewhere and is not easy to fix (which is why they haven't fixed it) so it looks like we're stuck with that one.

(Come to think of it, while I'm messing with BBC tags I am tempted to add one of my more evil inventions: the bouncing marquee. This initially makes people crack up laughing, bu over use of it also drives people mad. )

[Hawk]

Two carriage returns will still work there, ...

Isn't that a reference to the antiquated typewriter technology? I thought you were a little too young for that.

(Come to think of it, while I'm messing with BBC tags I am tempted to add one of my more evil inventions: the bouncing marquee. This initially makes people crack up laughing, bu over use of it also drives people mad. )

A bouncing marquee? That would be interesting.

Whatever you want to do with the clear tag. I was just playing around with it to understand it. Works pretty good though.

[Gumboots]

I remember typing on a non-electric typewriter in my youth. I used the term because it seems to be RoR's favourite term for a line break, but whatever. As long as we all know what it means (and you're right, a lot of kids probably wouldn't).

I'll leave the clear tag for now and see how it goes. If we decide it'd be best with some extra height, I'll change it then.

By the way, I'm thinking of this for the new site default style.

It's basically a light style built on the basis of my modification of Prosilver Dark (because it has fairly clean and rationalised files) but like the dark one it can have several selectable variations. I can probably even make one look pretty much like Aero.

[Hawk]

I like that style. A blue option would be cool.

[RulerofRails]

I don't really know what to call these things to be honest. When I look at the symbols for pushing Enter in Notepad++ I get CR LF. Which I see as Carriage Return, then Line Feed. I can remove one without changing the formating. But it's quite confusing to me that we are getting both. So in reality are we dealing with both, if one doesn't work, the other will be used? Idk.