Is everyone's blog format as ugly as mine?

When I write a blog on my site it looks fine, but after I post it I seem to lost much of the formatting - especially line breaks between paragraphs.  So for example here is what a blog post ends up looking like: http://www.caltrade.com/community/blogs/entry/Are-California-Business-Associations-failing,  I think that looks awful - all the text jumbled together like that.   So what is the issue here?  - a bug?  or am I doing something wrong.

Rob

If you know anything about html code you can write it in html with your breaks installed. If not, try writing it out in an html editor and then using the html tag on your WYSIWYG editor on your blog, paste the html code into the post as opposed to copying and pasting the text alone in the standard editor view settings. If you are posting from a word processor, there is lots of added scripting and code that you do not see ... which sometimes results in your site thinking someone is trying to hack it ... and if you are posting from notepad, KATE or another text editor (like you should be) there is no coding at all. Do it using the html code and you should be fine.

No, I am pretty sure I wrote those posts in a note pad and then pasted them there, so they shouldn't have picked up anything.   I know I at least put paragraph breaks in there, why didn't those take?

Because dolphins handling of carriage returns stinks. In the blogs, forums, most everywhere it is not done right. Most of it is the tinymce editor. I think it blows. I use the FCKeditor in most of my personal php projects.

I am not sure who. I don't remember, but i know someone was working on a way to replace tinymce in dolphin with fckeditor.

If you are writing them in txt format you should be able to insert < br > in between your paragraphs and have it work.

But

Let me try that here and the first one is done by inserting < br > and the second one is done by entering < br > < /br > with no spaces.

Hope that helps.

You could add this to templates/base/css/general.css  It will make all the ugly blogs look nice and pretty

p {

margin-bottom: 1em;

}

On my site. I also added: (To make bullet lists look better)

li {

margin-bottom: .5em;

}

@Anomaly, thanks for the suggestion, but naturally I my members to be posting blogs, not just me, and there would be no easy way to communicate this to them.

@HL - thank you, I will give it a shot - goodness though, I sure am getting a bunch of code changes just to make this product work properly.   My next upgrade is going to be a big hassle.

I don't think the problem is with TinyMCE.  Browsers are supposed to automatically add some space before and after the <p> tag, but it doesn't seem to be happening to the saved posts.  I have no idea why.  Specifying the spacing in a style sheet ensures that it will be added when the browser renders the page.  At least the posting of blogs will behave the way your members expect.  The alternative is to hold the shift key and hit enter twice to get the spacing, which will enter multiple <br/> tags instead of a <p>, but that will just leave user's wondering why they have to do it that way.

I added the <p> styling to general.css so that the styling would be applied site wide.  I haven't noticed any layout problems anywhere, so I don't think more specific css rules are needed.

I agree... it is a pain in the ass to keep track of all the little tweaks.  It would be a lot easier if Boonex started supplying upgrade packages that included ONLY the changed files, instead of needlessly overwriting 5,000 every time.

If your in the mood to play and get something better, there was a kid who did some work on adding FCKEditor to D6.  He posted all his information in this thread:

http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/?action=goto&search=1#topic/CKEditor-in-Dolphin.htm

We played with  adding it into our own sites with limited success.  The issues that comes up is when you upgrade blogs, groups, forums and articles.  Then it becomes more of a chore to get it to work.  Maybe some of you want to play with this for D7.  I know someone is trying to sell a mod for this for D7, but since this kid did most of the work for D6 and made it free, not sure it should be charged for in 7 either.

Adding a few css rules is a whole lot easier.

It is, I agree.  I located the thread since someone mentioned it, just trying to be nice and helpful to those who're looking for help.

Yea. the CCS rules would be a lot easier.

HL i bet is right. It's most likely more along the line of browsers. TinyMCE is designed to be standards compliant, but we all know how well browsers follow the standards.

The version of tinymce used in dolphin 6 also did not get along with the spell checker in the google toolbar. I read that issue has been fixed in the new version of tinymce. I don't know if D7 is using the new one. I have not looked.

I still prefer FCK. But i am not going to take the time to go through dolphin to replace it.

I don't know why but I had the same trouble with my old site and it's FCKeditor.

I couldn't change text colors no matter what I did. it always reverted to the colors assigned to the respective skins CSS designations. MOST annoying. It seemed to overpower whatever code you used in the editor and forced the browser to display it wrong. I think this is  the same issue, just with <p> tags. Somehow, the site is changing what is sent to the browser after it reads the content in the editor?

I don't know, I'm an idiot. Probably why I was never able to fix this issue in my old portal.

Maybe there's a way to get the site to process the editor last?

BTW, anyone know where the tinyMCE files are located in Dolphin?

In the plugins folder.

The root of the problem is that there is a CSS rule in the Boonex supplied general.css that set all margins to zero for the <p> tag.  I have no idea why this was done, but I expect it's why browsers don't automatically insert space when a <p> tag is encountered... the browsers are just doing what they are told to do by the Boonex supplied CSS rules.  Any page supplied CSS rules take precedence over what the browser would automatically do.  The CSS change I suggested fixes everything as far as I know.  It hasn't wrecked anything on my site.... so far.

HL, in general.css, where do you suggest we place this code? or doesn't it matter?

Stuart

The issue is a CSS issue. Basically the style applied to the P tag by TinyMCE and D7 are different - so it displays OK in the editor, but when the D7 code renders it - it is displayed differently.

The issue is in templates/base/css/general.css, the attribute margin:0px is applied to the P tag, remove this and the issue will be gone, BUT there is one caveat - obviously this affects ALL instances of the P tag - so it may be that whilst this cures the immediate issue, it may cause problems elsewhere (i've not tested this)

To fix the issue, you will need to change general.css in two places -

Line 1

Change

a img, form, p

to

a img, form

and on line 120

change

p
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}

to

p
{
padding:0px;
}

There is no real need to apply the attributes to the P as has been done, plus declaring the base P tag in two different places can lead to inheritance issues which is mostly a problem with IE.

If it turns out that removing these elements has too much of a knock on effect on other areas of the site, then The best solution may be to alter the TinyMCE css to match the D7 general by adding the margin:0px to plugins/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/skins/default/content.css At least then what you see will actually be what you get

HTH DM

Glad we got our p's straightened out.

a img, form

 Now that was a knowlageable and well thought out response.

Thank you.....

I added

p {margin:0;}

right below the img tag. I tested it and it's a perfect fix. Hit the enter key to add the extra line and WYSIWYG!

Well done!

I need to do the same exact thing to my Orca forum. It also has the same what you see is NOT what you get problem. Can I do the same

p {margin:0;}

Fix to the css for the forum? if so, where is that file located?

I've installed browserwebs mod and it works for me. I appreciate where MyDatery's coming from, but the fckeditor looked good and, as I said works well.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Stuart

RE:

What are you talking about?  p (margin:0;} is the CSS rule that screws everything up.

By the way, I finally got around to making this fix, and it looks much better.  I tried DeeEmm's first, and it looked a bit better, but didn't put a full line break between paragraphs.  Then I did HL's on top of that and it worked.  Thanks.

Did using HL's fix also solve the problem in the forum posts?

Don't know, my forums aren't very active so haven't tested.  Seems like it should though - it is a universal fix.

Well ... ... I guess there's one way to find out for sure eh?

I'll make HL's changes and let you know what happens.....

Ok, we are missing something here gentlemen. I removed the p designations (both of them) from the general.css file, I then removed my modification to the tiny_mce css file and we are right back to square 1.

The blog editor once again displays the space in the editor but once published, the space disappears like it was before. The changes had zero effect on the fish forum.... This is really frustrating.

One more change as outlined. I added in HL's suggested changes. They had absolutely no effect on the site at all as far as I can tell. Blog issue still exists as well as the forum....

test

test

test

test

OBVIOUSLY someone at Boonex has discovered this problem and resolved it. It works FINE here. This is just horseshit.

Ok, !!

I found the the edit that fixes (or screws up, depending on how you look at it) the p tag space issue in the editor in the forum

In :

modules/boonex/forum/layout/base_en/css/blank.css

You can remove the following line from line 12:

padding:5px 0 5px 0;

In the end, I left the general.css file as it was and modified the tiny_mce and the forum css files to match. That seems to work best for me.

Geezus.. you guys are acting like this is some kind of rocket science.  You might have better luck if you deleted all those cached css files after making a change.

Suggest you guys install the firebug extension on FF so you can inspect the css of various page elements.

Um - actually, not to start a fight or anything, but I did delete the cache and all related temp files from my machine between each change. The changes you made had no effect. The reason I believe that is so is the 'general.css' file isn't really so general after all. Hell, I even switched browsers just to make sure ....

This is your current relevant css:

I know. I changed the forum and the tiny_mce to match. It might be backwards but at least it's the same. I could not make it work the other way and I'm tired of f__cking with it. My ultimate goal was to just make it work as a WYSIWYG editor. If they have to hit the enter key to gain a line space, so be it.

Well, if you turned off your site's caching while making css changes, you wouldn't have any problems.

Anyway, for the benefit of those who understand rocket science, if you ad this to the BOTTOM of templates/base/css/general.css

p {

margin-bottom: 1em;

}


li {

margin-bottom: .5em;

}


AND delete ALL of the cached files on your server, it will work just fine.  Now please don't somebody come along like DE and make a perfectly fine f#@king solution confusing by providing another fix.

-30-

Well son of a *()&*(@$^&(^*()&&*(%^*!!!

Why couldn't you have just said that earlier!? (said while ducking!!)

 Come on SF... You know that HL has always gotta take the longer route.  In the end he just coulda said:

Turn off Caching

Clear the ALL the Caches

Open Templates/base/css/general.css

Enter the following at the "END" of the file

li

{

margin-bottom:.5em;

}

p

{

margin-bottom:1em;

}

But no, he had to take the long friggin' route and say it all in his own way just to confuse the crap out of ya.  LOL

I figured you old fossils would have known that by now.

You know, just to piss everybody off, I'm gonna create a community where EVERYTHING works bassackwards from the way it's supposed to work. THEN I'll finally be in my element and have HL on the run...

RE:

Shouldn't be too hard... half the stuff in Dolphin already works ass backwards.

Just for fun, the whole thing should come out upside down. 

WHOA a blast from the past!

Obviously this was never fixed in the 7.0.1 update. My changes were overwritten when I went to 7.0.1. If you used this fix, you will need to reinstall it as I found out today.

Still works perfectly, thanks HL....

UHT OH! Back the train up! Major issue making this change. My SpyWall has completely disappeared!

Check this out.

along about line 329, this happened when I saved the general.css file after I made the changes

.actionsСontainer,

Now I'm no code-scientist, but isn't this supposed to be

.actionsContainer, ???

That stupid cpanel interface locked up when I had the general css file about half opened. I found the error doing a file compare in my editpadpro and fixed it in about 5 minutes. It was weird, it caused my spywall mod to toss all the page blocks I had installed in homepage, account and profile. This is a good reminder to make backups all the time, LOL

All is well now....

There is no problem with the blogpost, just take a look at my site, everything is working nicely. It is in norwegian, but as you can see it looks nice as it should. http://www.nordnyt.com/c/blogs/entry/Profetens-skjegg

RE:

I hate to tell you this, but no it isn't working nicely.  Your underlying html markup in that blog post is a total mess.  It has a bunch of unnecessary paragraph tags and line break tags.

Ok, the fix no longer works for me. It solves the problems in the editors but cause display problems elsewhere in my site. Isn't there a way we can make the editor itself take care of this problem?

RE:

If you weren't  such a stubborn old geezer and just added this to the Bottom of general.css, you wouldn't have these problems.

Look who's talking freaky hair guy!

(lol)

Like I said, it SOLVES the spacing problems in the editors for the forum, blogs and articles BUT it causes overlapping issues and spacing issues with one of my mods... I don't want to fix the whole site, just the editors....

Can you even begin to imagine what it would really take to fix the whole site anyway? Jesus, My Ajax works more like Comet on my site to begin with....

OK OK! I'll just reinstall the fix and get my mod creator to fix his stuff. Damned annoying, this whole process.....

Which mod? .... it wouldn't be the FB/Twitter mod, would it?   Because, there's a really bad bit of css in that one.

No, IBDW's spy wall mod. When I add the changes to the general css file, the input text box goes to hell and the send button wacks out...

The issue is as I mentioned in my earlier post - The css rendering of the editor and the css rendering of the site are different - the fix is to make them the same. This is achieved by removing the margin:0px attribute - which shouldn't be there in the first place.

The issue with adding style attributes to the paragraph tag is that the paragraph tag is used everywhere, so you add one attribute and it effects other instances where this tag is used (as you have found with your mods).

Instead of adding more attributes to cover up the issue, simply remove the one causing the problem as I outlined above.

Then, if you then want to style your paragraphs to look different (Caltrades issue), you need to do this for both TinyMCE's css and the templates general css so that they are the same. Generally this is done by adding attributes in the general.css file only - as this should be inherited by TinyMCE.

HTH

/DM

There's 6 different instances of the margin:0px attribute. Remove them all?

Yes - if it is on a paragraph tag related to posted content, remove it.  Or you can add it to plugins/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/skins/default/content.css

Either should achieve the same.

/DM

I'M GONNA PULL MY FRIKKIN GREY HAIR OUT!

I removed 6 instances of the attribute margin:0px; and as DM said, it solved the spacing problem in my editors and I cannot see any ill effects to the rest of the site .... EXCEPT my spywall mod. It now has the same problem it had when I added HL's fix.

AAARGH!

You got a URL to it??

/DM

You might have more mileage adding the extra tag to TinyMCE

/DM

Ya know.... that might be an improvement.

Seriously though... a lot of these mod purveyors read about a css reset in one of their books, and think they need to add it everywhere.  This one from the FB mod is a little drastic:

*{
margin:0;
padding:0;
list-style:none
}

Yeah. I screwed with it so much I decided to replace the general.css with a new copy. I made the adjustments before I uploaded it to my server. In the end, I only removed 2 of the aforementioned attributes. Both were related to the P tag.

It fixed the forum. Text looks great now. I haven't tested the rest of the editors but my feeling is they will also be fine now.

I still have issues with the display of some icons and a text box in my spywall mod.

I will create a username for you and message you with it so you can access the wall and take a look.

 I agree. Don't most of these attributes default to zero anyway?

You have mail DM!

Are you referring to the wall on the home page? it looks fine from here - lemme know and I will mail you a screen grab if you want

/DM

Problem resolved, thanks to my new friend DM!

For me, the P tag spacing fix for my editors was just a matter of removing the margin:0px; attribute from each place in the general.css file that referrred to the P tag. (I think there was only 2) That completely corrected my editor problems but did cause one new problem with spacing around the text box in my spywall mod.

Something was overriding the class .areamsg in modules/ibdw/spywall/spywallstyle.css file on line 339. Instead of trying to determine what was overriding it, we just made it a little more important.

by simply changing it from:

width:74%;

to:

width:74%!important;

we solved the problem completely.

Great work DM. I really appreciate your help.!!

Ahh... I forgot about that a few days ago when working on something I was trying:

background-color: #151515 !NowThisAintNoShit;