editing your posts

[AB Editor]

I'm feeling terribly silly at the moment, so please excuse me. It must be the sun.

Starting next week all posts will include a preview pane so you will be able to edit your posts before you submit it to a thread. You will have the option to edit, so for people who want to quickly submit a post you won't need to preview it first.

The new posting system will get rid of those nasty html tags that some of you have complained about and standardise the look of the posts � sorry, no more colours! The formatting strip at the top of the posting box will also disappear.

We hope you like the changes and as always if you experience any technical difficulty please email us through the Contact Us page.

[B00]

Awww Ed, no more colours? and no more being able to highlight peoples names like this?

[rugeleyboy]

what about funkymoped's blue???

[smudge]

Thank you Ed & thank your Tech's once again for their email this afternoon too.

Nice to know these things are being looked into. ;o}

[smudge]

P.S. Shame about the colours though, they always made for nice birthday greetings!

Ne'er mind, I'm sure we'll get used to not having them.....

[dot.hawkes]

I fail to see the reason for this addition to the site, it deprives us of the other options I like, the different colours, italics and enbolding options, I use the ABCcheck on the google tool bar for anmy spellchecking if i am unsure of a word, what else is necessary? I also don't get why we need uniformity, never liked that word.

[smudge]

I sometimes use Google for certain spelling of words too Dot, but if we have an editing facility for Questions, why not for Answers too?

The Ed has only mentioned 'no more colours' - I certainly hope we won't be losing Bold, Italics & Underline too - are we Ed????

[smudge]

Surely not going to lose the Align Left, Align Right, Centre, Bullpoints, Numbers, etc?

Surely not Ed.........

[THECORBYLOON]

ABE I have always used bold and an underscore on a person's name to bring to it to that person's attention that I am referring to that person or a comment made by that person. It can also give a meaning or emphasis to other words or phrases which otherwise would not be conveyed.

Will you re-consider the format facility?

[smudge]

TCL - I have emailed the AB Ed to ask if the team will reconsider - I certainly hope they will - we shall see.....

[THECORBYLOON]

Aye, that'll be Saturday Night!

[littleoldme]

Yay! A preview facility! Nice one Ed, more power to your considerable elbow, fair lady. :-)

[Slooow_Jo]

Well ever since my 'squiggle stalkers' incident I have been using firefox & I dont have any of the options everyone talks of :( so I probably wont get the new feature either.

[joko]

canot see the point in viewing your post in another window before submitting - why not just spend an extra minute looking at the original window and edit it there, before hitting submit?

the question preview doesn't do any kind of spellchecking or formatting for you, so why not just do it first?

i think when people asked for the edit facility they meant after they had already been posted and an error was spotted.

why not allow a, say, 5 minute edit window for your post before it becomes permanent

this 'facility' is the reason the formatting bar is being removed.

utterly pointless ed

[aka estie]

I'm afraid I agree with joko on this one. Doesn't make any sense at all :(

[cat woman]

why fix it, if its not bbroken!............

[zipadeedodah]

I agree - seems pointless. I'd rather have the use of the toolbar for bold, italic, colour etc than be able to look at my answer (which as joko says, you can do before you submit it in the first place!)

I can see why it is not viable to let people edit their posts after they have been finally submitted...however the idea of a short length of time to be able to do this before it's permanent sounds good.

[Craig007]

This sounds like a change for the worst to me.

Its like we have all been naughty children so the teacher has taken our crayons off us!

[unruliejulie]

I love the colours!! Pleaseeeeeee let us keep them ED, as rugeleyboy mentioned, what about funkymoped? It just wouldn't be the same. :-( I generally use a bold type for names, so they can be easily picked out. Don't do it!!!!

[AB Editor]

Hi All

Yep, no more colours. The chief reason behind this exercise is to get rid of the spurious html tags that were appearing in posts due to our use of RTE (Rich Text Editor). As we grow the AnswerBank this will happen more frequently and will become an unmanageable blight on the site. We did, however, do some preliminary investigation into how frequently certain formatting options are used and here are the figures:

Of the last 100,000 answers

7.25% had bold items.

2.50% had italic items.

2.37% had coloured items.

0.06% had underlines elements.

There were almost no ordered lists or paragraph formatting.

We aim to develop this site further in ways that will increase performance and make the site easier and more interesting to use while not losing what makes this site work - its community.

If you have any further queries about changes to the site, please email me.

[Drusilla1S]

Well, I for one will appreciate the opportunity to preview my answers before posting and thank you for that Ms. Ed.