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The Icon Bar: Site Comments: Long words
 
  Long words
  richcheng (11:45 23/10/2006)
  Phlamethrower (11:52 23/10/2006)
  rich (12:15 23/10/2006)
    richcheng (14:04 23/10/2006)
      richcheng (14:06 23/10/2006)
        rich (14:20 23/10/2006)
          monkeyson2 (14:27 23/10/2006)
            rich (15:01 23/10/2006)
              Phlamethrower (15:03 23/10/2006)
              richcheng (15:53 23/10/2006)
                rich (16:11 23/10/2006)
                  richcheng (16:48 23/10/2006)
                  tlsa (17:34 23/10/2006)
                    Phlamethrower (19:52 23/10/2006)
 
richard cheng Message #81627, posted by richcheng at 11:45, 23/10/2006

Posts: 655
Could we please have an auto-chopping feature for obscenely long words (and URLS) that hacks them in twain when they're going to start requiring horizontal scrolling.

Currently pages such as this are a pain in the arse to read on a computer, and absolute bloody murder on my Nintendo DS (which we all know is the new computer of choice for former riscosateers)

Ideally, words should have a hyphen stuck in, and urls should either be truncated with an ellipsis, thus:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Secure-Digital-Memo...

or just chopped up, sort of similar to this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-Secure-Digital-Memo
ry-Card/dp/B00096J3DU/sr=1-1/qid=1161464712/ref=sr
_1_1/026-0266335-9370011?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

But with the links obviously still pointing to the right place.

I'd have coded the actual html, but the comments page won't let me.
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Jeffrey Lee Message #81629, posted by Phlamethrower at 11:52, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81627
PhlamethrowerHot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100
IE wordwraps that URL on the hyphens; I haven't checked on any other browsers.
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Richard Goodwin Message #81630, posted by rich at 12:15, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81627
Rich
Dictator for life
Posts: 6824
How long is long? Should we be chopping them at roughly 800 pixels? 1024? 1280? 1440? 1600?

I think someone should get Firefox to do this properly, if IE already does. Anyone any good at extension writing? :)
________
RichGCheers,
Rich.
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richard cheng Message #81637, posted by richcheng at 14:04, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81630

Posts: 655
800. It doesn't really do any harm to chop them unnecessarily, you see.

A Firefox extension would help, but it'd still be broken for links on my DS :(
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richard cheng Message #81638, posted by richcheng at 14:06, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81637

Posts: 655
Alternatively, if it's possible to change the site layout so that one very wide post doesn't make *all* posts on that page superwide, that would be a good solution, too.

Then it would also work for large images, you see.
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Richard Goodwin Message #81641, posted by rich at 14:20, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81638
Rich
Dictator for life
Posts: 6824
Alternatively, if it's possible to change the site layout so that one very wide post doesn't make *all* posts on that page superwide, that would be a good solution, too.

Then it would also work for large images, you see.
Aw, and I wanted to use scrolling DIVs ;)

It might be that the forum can be updated so that each message area can have said CSS added so that if they're bigger than the current page can allow, it turns on a horizontal scrollbar..?
________
RichGCheers,
Rich.
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Phil Mellor Message #81642, posted by monkeyson2 at 14:27, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81641
monkeyson2Please don't let them make me be a monkey butler

Posts: 12380
Do many browsers support the <wbr> tag?

This should give a hint to the browser where to put a word break if necessary.

[Edited by monkeyson2 at 15:28, 23/10/2006]
  ^[ Log in to reply ]
 
Richard Goodwin Message #81644, posted by rich at 15:01, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81642
Rich
Dictator for life
Posts: 6824
You'd still have to manually butcher a URL which could affect things like, ooh, automatic URL linkage.

<div style="width:600px; overflow:auto;"> was what I was looking for (because I used it on an image and knew it was in the DB). Although you'd* have to add it by JavaScript so that you can see how big the browser window is first, otherwise having all messages default to a width of 600 pixels would be annoying to someone like me who uses 1280 or 1440 screens.

* or whoever'd
________
RichGCheers,
Rich.
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Jeffrey Lee Message #81645, posted by Phlamethrower at 15:03, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81644
PhlamethrowerHot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100
Or, I could just remember to clicky any long links in the future :P
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richard cheng Message #81647, posted by richcheng at 15:53, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81644

Posts: 655
You'd still have to manually butcher a URL which could affect things like, ooh, automatic URL linkage.
But you could butcher the display value of the url, leaving the actual url intact. Like this:

< a href="long_ass_url">butchered_url< /a>

And thus leaving a working URL. Not sure If I managed to get that point across in my original post, or not.

I am aware this would be a lot of work for little benefit.
  ^[ Log in to reply ]
 
Richard Goodwin Message #81650, posted by rich at 16:11, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81647
Rich
Dictator for life
Posts: 6824
You'd still have to manually butcher a URL which could affect things like, ooh, automatic URL linkage.
But you could butcher the display value of the url, leaving the actual url intact. Like this:

< a href="long_ass_url">butchered_url< /a>

And thus leaving a working URL. Not sure If I managed to get that point across in my original post, or not.
I'm more concerned when someone types a URL, which is auto-linked with the same URL. The display text version of the URL gets butchered, and then someone quotes the butchered version. The auto-link generation might then get confused by the butcherisation, and re-link the link.

Alternatively, adding CSS to make all 'a href' links less than 600 pixels or scroll might work. Then the page will be auto sized, it's just the links that get auto-munged, but transparently. It wouldn't even add code to the page, just to the stylesheet. And if it also gets done to images, perhaps people will stop posting huge images, or at least use the attachments more ;)
________
RichGCheers,
Rich.
  ^[ Log in to reply ]
 
richard cheng Message #81652, posted by richcheng at 16:48, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81650

Posts: 655
You'd still have to manually butcher a URL which could affect things like, ooh, automatic URL linkage.
But you could butcher the display value of the url, leaving the actual url intact. Like this:

< a href="long_ass_url">butchered_url< /a>

And thus leaving a working URL. Not sure If I managed to get that point across in my original post, or not.
I'm more concerned when someone types a URL, which is auto-linked with the same URL. The display text version of the URL gets butchered, and then someone quotes the butchered version. The auto-link generation might then get confused by the butcherisation, and re-link the link.
That sounds highly likely, actually, given the amount of hassle I had in my attempts (and eventual failure) to demonstrate my possible solution. The auto-link generation would need to be quite a bit more intelligent than it currently is for my suggestion to work. Of course, if I'd noticed the "Convert URLs into clickable links" checkbox an hour when I was doing so, I might have found it easier.

Alternatively, adding CSS to make all 'a href' links less than 600 pixels or scroll might work. Then the page will be auto sized, it's just the links that get auto-munged, but transparently. It wouldn't even add code to the page, just to the stylesheet.
That sounds like a classier solution.

And if it also gets done to images, perhaps people will stop posting huge images, or at least use the attachments more ;)
To be fair to the huge-image-posting bastards, though, I've not seen one for a long time, and the last one I do remember was an extremely hot lady, and thus forgivable. (Encouraged?)
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Michael Drake Message #81656, posted by tlsa at 17:34, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81650

Posts: 1097
"A" is inline and the overflow property is only meant to be used on block level elements. You could display "A" as a block, but I think that could cause more problems than it solves. Inline-block is not very well supported.
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Jeffrey Lee Message #81670, posted by Phlamethrower at 19:52, 23/10/2006, in reply to message #81656
PhlamethrowerHot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100
eek, Netfront doesn't wrap the line either. I'll fix the link :P
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The Icon Bar: Site Comments: Long words