Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum
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@pafflick said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
@tsukashu I'd say that Markdown is the most dumbed-down (and thus easiest to use) text formatting system that I've seen on a forum (apart from WYSIWYG editors). Formatting text with BBCode was not much simpler than using HTML, since it had similar opening and closing tags system (in many cases the syntax was identical to HTML, just with different brackets).
You have the basic formatting options here, you can use them by simply selecting the text and clicking a button. Is it THAT complicated? And some of them are even quite intuitive (like using the lists), so that even a person which is not familiar with Markdown can easily use it. You are really the first person to say that BBCode was simpler than Markdown...
Markdown's main advantage is that when raw, it still looks similar to regular text, but I don't know if it's necessarily really beginner-friendlier than BBCode-style markup, because it has a lot of quirks people have to learn to look out for.
It can be accidentally triggered by a bunch of different symbols, whereas with BBCode, if you don't add square brackets with valid tags, nothing unusual will ever happen. Examples:
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Someone wants to put an asterisk to mark the beginning of a footnote. Instead, they end up making a list bullet like the one to the left.
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Some one tries to instruct someone to type "cd \", while using quotation marks around it as I just did. Except the \" gets interpreted as "escaped quotation mark", so they end up telling the person into type "cd ". To avoid this, they would need to know to escape the backslash with another backslash, e.g. writing "cd \\".
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Copying in a few of lines shell script? They'd better to remember to enclose it in the start/stop-formating-as PRE-text "```" lines or they could get comment lines rendered as headings becuase of the # symbols at the begining.
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probably other cases not coming to mind just now.
Also, the way markdown is finicky about the formatting marks needing to be adjoining word characters, with no spaces in between (e.g. "***text1***" becomes "text1", but "***text2 ***" does not affect formatting unless at some point later one writes "text3***") may not be so inuitive.
Then there are inconsistencies to know, like the fact that while both asterisks and underscores italicize, apparently only the asterisks can italicize mid-word (e.g. "aaa*bbb*ccc" -> "aaabbbccc", "aaa_bbb_ccc" -> "aaa_bbb_ccc"), probably because when defining the Commonmark standard they realized that underscores get used mid-word for things like filenames, while using asterisks midword is rarer.
In terms of capabilities, it's annoying that, without extensions, Commonmark doesn't support colored text, superscript, subscript, spoiler blocks, etc., which are commonly supported in BBCode.
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@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
Markdown's main advantage is that when raw, it still looks similar to regular text, but I don't know if it's necessarily really beginner-friendlier than BBCode-style markup, because it has a lot of quirks people have to learn to look out for.
Or they could just take a look once in a while at the preview of their message and fix any issues before posting it. There is no perfect solution, I'm afraid...
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
It can be accidentally triggered by a bunch of different symbols, whereas with BBCode, if you don't add square brackets with valid tags, nothing unusual will ever happen. Examples:
- Someone wants to put an asterisk to mark the beginning of a footnote. Instead, they end up making a list bullet like the one to the left.
If there was no live preview of the post it would be quite annoying. But when you're able to notice right away that there's something unwanted in the output, you can try to fix it by removing the spacing, adding slashes, quotes etc. (though - again - it's not a perfect solution). It might be annoying for someone unfamiliar with Markdown, but people rarely put footnotes in their posts on forums anyway.
I think in this case they (Markdown devs) tried to strike a balance between simplicity and compatibility...@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
- Some one tries to instruct someone to type "cd \", while using quotation marks around it as I just did. Except the \" gets interpreted as "escaped quotation mark", so they end up telling the person into type "cd ". To avoid this, they would need to know to escape the backslash with another backslash, e.g. writing "cd \\".
I think this example is exaggerated. If someone is familiar with commands or a programming language (read: if he/she is a geek) there's a chance they'll know how to handle slashes. Again, live preview comes in handy. I can hardly imagine people struggling from this kind of issue. It is an issue, but how many people have encountered it? 5%? 1%? Or maybe even less?
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
- Copying in a few of lines shell script? They'd better to remember to enclose it in the start/stop-formating-as PRE-text "```" lines or they could get comment lines rendered as headings becuase of the # symbols at the begining.
I think the first thing most people do before posting any script or code is to look for the
insert code
button. The only problem is that we don't have such button here on this forum, but it's not the Markdown's fault, probably just the nodeBB script's implementation of it.@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
- probably other cases not coming to mind just now.
Also, the way markdown is finicky about the formatting marks needing to be adjoining word characters, with no spaces in between (e.g. "***text1***" becomes "text1", but "***text2 ***" does not affect formatting unless at some point later one writes "text3***") may not be so inuitive.
Another overblown example... Same happens when you accidentally remove just one bracket from the BBCode. If you're using the syntax incorrectly it's pretty obvious that it won't work as expected. What's your point?
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
Then there are inconsistencies to know, like the fact that while both asterisks and underscores italicize, apparently only the asterisks can italicize mid-word (e.g. "aaa*bbb*ccc" -> "aaabbbccc", "aaa_bbb_ccc" -> "aaa_bbb_ccc"), probably because when defining the Commonmark standard they realized that underscores get used mid-word for things like filenames, while using asterisks midword is rarer.
You need to know these inconsistencies only if you know that there are two ways of formatting the text. The power users will know about it, but it won't be a problem for them to learn those few exceptions. And the "casual" users will probably use buttons for that purpose, so they won't even know about the underscores thing, not to mention learning how using it differs from the asterisks...
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
In terms of capabilities, it's annoying that, without extensions, Commonmark doesn't support colored text, superscript, subscript, spoiler blocks, etc., which are commonly supported in BBCode.
Lack of colored text is both an upside and downside of Markdown (personally I prefer all posts presented in one color, esp. that - IMO - most people that use colored text on forums have the tendency to pick the worst colors they can find, like flashy red, bright yellow etc.), lack of sub- or superscript one can override by using special characters like "²" or "₇" if they really need to. AFAIK spoiler tags - as much as useful - are not included in BBCode by default.
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It's true that most of the things I listed aren't that hard to deal with, as long as there's live preview. But then, BBCode tags mostly seem to me like they'd be pretty trivially easy to use for a beginner, too, similarly given live preview and selection-formatting buttons. My general point was not to claim that Markdown is very difficult, just to question whether it's necessarily simpler to learn than BBCode. (I'll grant you, though, that making a list in Markdown is surely easier for a beginner.)
As far as my own use, I guess the only thing I miss are color, background-color, and superscript/subscript formatting options, and spoiler tags. (For some of those, I see there are NodeBB plugins, although with such plugins there's always the question of how long they'll be maintained.)
Yeah, I agree that colored text is annoyingly overused by some, but I found it handy for the occasional case where I needed stylistically distinct inline text. Inline
Inline code blocks
would probably sufficient for most of the cases I've used colored text or colored background spans in the past, however. Most of the cases I ever used colored text or colored background actually were to distinguish inline code quotes, after all. (Perhaps it's just as well that's not purple, or someone might abuse that...)As for superscript and subscript and Unicode, that works ok for numbers, but for letters, it's spottier (both in terms of what's defined in Unicode at all and variability in client support for the characters).
None of these are huge problems, though; it's just a bit more restrictive.
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@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
But then, BBCode tags mostly seem to me like they'd be pretty trivially easy to use for a beginner, too, similarly given live preview and selection-formatting buttons. My general point was not to claim that Markdown is very difficult, just to question whether it's necessarily simpler to learn than BBCode. (I'll grant you, though, that making a list in Markdown is surely easier for a beginner.)
Another advantage of Markdown over BBCode (when it comes to learning) is that in Markdown you use identical pairs of characters for enclosing the text that has to be formatted, whereas in BBCode you have to use both opening and closing tags, just like in HTML. That's not too intuitive for people unfamiliar with coding / programming languages...
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
As far as my own use, I guess the only thing I miss are color, background-color, and superscript/subscript formatting options, and spoiler tags. (For some of those, I see there are NodeBB plugins, although with such plugins there's always the question of how long they'll be maintained.)
Usually these types of plugins don't require third-party services to work and thus should be operative as long as the forum's script isn't updated or as long as the update doesn't cause some interference with those plugins.
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
Yeah, I agree that colored text is annoyingly overused by some, but I found it handy for the occasional case where I needed stylistically distinct inline text. Inline
Inline code blocks
would probably sufficient for most of the cases I've used colored text or colored background spans in the past, however. Most of the cases I ever used colored text or colored background actually were to distinguish inline code quotes, after all. (Perhaps it's just as well that's not purple, or someone might abuse that...)I feel the same, but I'm willing to give up those colors in exchange for a content that is not turned into some unsightly rainbow of colored text... Perhaps I'm a little over exaggerating, but I've seen too many forums in my life and this is just how I feel about it.
@Isildur said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
As for superscript and subscript and Unicode, that works ok for numbers, but for letters, it's spottier (both in terms of what's defined in Unicode at all and variability in client support for the characters).
And for what purpose would you need that subscript or superscript text? I'm not claiming that it's completely superfluous, only that it's something that is necessary only in some extremely rare cases. In the vast majority of cases, subscript and superscript are used for numbers.
You know, you can't include tools for everything that users would like to put on forums... There is no perfect balance here, I'm afraid, there'll be always someone complaining about some missing or redundant features...
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Not sure if this was mentioned, as I wasn't sure what to look for when I scrolled through all the previous posts. But some forums somewhere have a link to view a list of all of your previous posts. I like scrolling through those, especially if I think I might have commented in a thread that now pertains to a current issue I have. I looked all over but didn't see anything.
Is there a link to this somewhere that I missed? If not, then I'd definitely like to make a feature request for this.
EDIT: Just found this link: https://forum.vivaldi.net/user/username That did it. Not sure if you need to be logged in or not for this to work, but that's fine, in any other forum of course I'd need to be logged in to see my own posts.
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Not at all, I made that edit quite a while before reading your post. Can't believe I logged in to read a post begging for a thumbs up.
@Quinca71 said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
@paulri said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
EDIT: Just found this link: https://forum.vivaldi.net/user/username That did it. Not sure if you need to be logged in or not for this to work, but that's fine, in any other forum of course I'd need to be logged in to see my own posts.
My post had inspired your edition, does it not? If so, don't you think I deserve an upvote? You're welcome.
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@tsukashu said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
A function giving choice can be better for everyone.
Then why don't you make your request and post it here? I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what is the feature that you actually wish for...
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Please extend the time for editing posts to at least 24 hours.
I just spotted a link that did not format correctly and does not work. It looks like a link, but it goes nowhere.
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Well, I think should be a bit changed. I don't like time limits, don't blame me.
However I don't know if it is possible.-
Users with 1-10 replies. They only can add replies/quotes and edit them in the hour range (like now). Downvotes disabled.
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Users with 10-25 replies. They can add replies/quotes and edit in 12h range. Limited downvotes (5?)
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Users with 25-50 replies. 24h range edit timeout. Limited downvotes (10?)
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Users with 50-75 replies. 48h range edit timeout.
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Users with 75-100 replies. 72h range edit timeout.
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More than 100+ replies. Free edits and own post removal (ok, maybe 1 month since last edit, at least). Removal maybe approved by mods (accidental useful thread removal).
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Improve post reply screen (add commands for code and so on, I know there is a link to markdown.. but it's better if it is in the screen).
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- Currently a thread will automatically be marked as read after ~48 hours.
- It seems that (mostly?) on such automatically marked threads I will always be directed to the first posting no matter if it's an old (multi paged) thread and just one new posting was made.
If possible please do not automatically mark any thread as read and especially make it possible that one can always reach the first unread posting.
IMHO an arbitrary time (no matter if 48 hours or 2 weeks) for marking a thread as read is quite useless for both regular and infrequent visitors.
If it must be (but I consider this also as a setback to a modern forum software) mark all threads read when logging out.
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@Quinca71 Just copy the link which is added as the timestamp for each post and you will get a direct link to that post. For example, this is the link to your post here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/87115
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@pafflick said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
Just copy the link which is added as the timestamp for each post
Unfortunately, that does not work on the blogs
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@Quinca71 Yes, now I see that. My bad - I did somehow overlook that part. Perhaps the fact that you posted your request about the blog in the thread for request considering the forum led to my misinterpretation of your post.
Nevertheless, from what I heard the platform for the blog (Joomla) is due to be changed to another one (Wordpress) in the near future and thus such a request is IMO a bit redundant at this time.
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@Quinca71 There's no dedicated subcategory for Vivaldi blog or webmail service and you were also told to add your request here by the forum's moderator (I haven't checked your initial thread earlier), so I guess you're excused. Anyway, there's no point to talk about it anymore, I think everything has been said and all we need to do now is to wait for the web devs to make their move.
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@Telegram That sounds like a recipe for insecurity. All kinds of spammers and scammers would love to have secret accounts. It is much better if everyone can see what other users are doing here, so that they can report inappropriate forum use to the moderators.
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@Telegram Since you're not obliged to use your real name here or share any sensitive information about yourself, what would be a point of that?
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@Telegram said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
No one who knows my vivaldi.net email address needs to see when I have logged in here or when I am online.
You can always create a separate account for the e-mail or for the forum and also you can select your on-line visibility to "Invisible".
@Telegram said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
Since there are good reasons. Please don't for get: Everyone has different needs (;
If there are any good reasons and you know about them, then you should provide them here. Otherwise, the webdev team @ Vivaldi might not make the effort to implement the features that you ask for. You need to provide a little more elaborated argument than "Everyone has different preferences"...
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@Telegram said in Feature requests for Vivaldi's new forum:
more options for security settings speaks for it self. it's an argument in itself
It's a very broad term, one can keep making such vague requests forever... So, don't expect to see any new features considering the security anytime soon if you don't make specific requests.
I'm not making any requests myself (considering the security of Vivaldi's webmail service) because I don't use it at all and I can't even tell what features it is missing.
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(Vivaldi browser) Features requests area
I was thinking, as usually the request thread become very big, why don't split all the requests in some macro areas?
- New vivaldi version (let say 1.8 xD)
- User interface / Theming requests
- Bookmarks / history requests
- Privacy requests
- Extensions / plugins requests (link to its section)
- (sticked) Things in production
Probably I miss something, but maybe is better not to confuse people with many categories.
- New vivaldi version (let say 1.8 xD)
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They need to get feature requests out of the forums. They're unwieldy, nobody reads the extremely long threads, and users need to repost every month or so.
It's a solved problem. Just make a github already, Vivaldi.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/14215/feature-requests-make-a-github-already