Unable to post messages with Safari (MacOS 10)

It's also broken in Opera 8.5

GRRRR!

Please lose the stupid rich text editing and go back to the wonderful, simple, cross-browser plain text input box.

Thanks!

MichaelLuke at 2007-9-8 >

Jana wrote:

Safari is not a supported browser at this time. Thanks Jana Carter Forums Product Manager

And yet Safari and Opera were both supported less than a month ago when you had the standard plain text entry field.

Who made the decision to remove the plain text field and why? Surely you were aware it would reduce the accessibility of the website for very little gain? As a site geared towards a technical audience, it's unlikely that many posters were unable to grasp the markup required in a plain text field.

I do wonder sometimes why Microsoft seems to go so far out of its way to ensure ill will towards the company.

MichaelLuke at 2007-9-8 >

Thanks for your detailed answer, Joe. It's good to see someone making the effort to explain decisions rather than having them swept under the rug.

Joe Morel - MSFT wrote:

The text entry box that we removed was incompatible with all browsers other than Internet Explorer, including Firefox. The new text editor adds richer Firefox support, as part of our broad commitment to make sure that we are supporting the most widely used browsers--not just Internet Explorer.

I really don't know what you're talking about here when you mention the previous text entry box that was IE-only as I've always used Opera to browse and post to the forums.

Perhaps in the past you had a rich-text box for IE and a plain-text input box for other browsers?

As it stands at the moment you have a rich-text box that works in IE and Firefox, but all other browsers are excluded. Why didn't you keep the plain-text input for those of us who don't use one of your supported browsers (or indeed, just hate rtf input boxes ;-) )?

MichaelLuke at 2007-9-8 >

Joe Morel - MSFT wrote:

We never had a plain-text input box on these forums. The text box that was replaced was a custom text box that looked a bit like Word that was part of Community Server, the historical code base for these forums. I can't imagine how you were able to get a plain-text box.

Well that's stumped me!

I'm trying to remember how it looked when I was able to post using Opera...

I think I'm talking about a normal text entry box, where you could just type in your message with formatting codes directly in the text, and no attempt at WYSIWYG was made. There probably was some javascript stuff in a header above the box, but I never use these because it's quicker just to type the formatting code directly into the input box.

I'd love it if you gave us the option (in the profile maybe) to choose between the hideous WYSIWYG input box that only works on IE and FireFox, and a standard type-your-message-with-embedded-formatting-tags input box that we know will work on all browsers. [Even when I'm forced to use IE I'd prefer to have a non-WYSIWYG input box]

Also, it'd be great to be able to check messages and reply using my mobile phone (running mobile Opera)!

Joe Morel - MSFT wrote:

(I'd sure like to see avatars, wouldn't you?)

Only if you make them so that I can turn them off

I love the clean look of this site as it is - avatars could ruin it.

MichaelLuke at 2007-9-8 >

Sorry for posting in an old topic, but I thought I should add something to this...

The text box used in Google's Blogger.com is RichText for browsers that support it, and PlainText for browsers that don't (like Safari.)

Not only Google's blogger, almost EVERY single Rich text box apart from the Microsoft one! This rich text box is ugly, and the font size/type seems to change every time I press enter :P

Here's the browser share data (raw) for December 2005:

Like I've said before, the only reason why there's so many people using Internet Explorer on the site is because other browsers aren't supported (kinda like a chicken-and-egg problem, huh?). If you added support for other browsers, the numbers relating to other browsers would increase...

That's <1%, and it just doesn't make sense to spend time on compatibility with those browser compared to improving other things with the forums (I'd sure like to see avatars, wouldn't you?)

Isn't it better to spend time fixing things like this, rather than introducing new features?

Daniel15 at 2007-9-8 >

We're still looking into your issue Joe...we simply aren't able to duplicate the error message on any computer here. We've had numerous reports of errors and breakdowns in the rich text editor when certain security software is running (Norton Internet Security and ZoneAlarm have both caused past problems), so I'd start there. I also noticed that you were running Windows XP SP1...I'd suggest upgrading to SP2 ASAP--IE runs slightly differently in the newer version.

As for Safari, I've used it on my iMac at home, and I have to say that I avoid using it as much as possible because there are so many websites that it doesn't work properly with. I'd suggest trying out Camino or Firefox as an alternative browser...nope, they don't work as well as IE 6 does for these forums, but they *should* work.

JoeMorel-MSFT at 2007-9-8 >