We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Comments on Samizdata – a technical question I have a technical question… the comment forms on Samizdata have formatting buttons for the text, but alas these only appear to work for people using Internet Explorer.
Does anyone know of a pop-up comment system we might be able to use which will allow push-button formatting to function in IE and Firefox, plus allow us to use our groovy graphics and is compatable with an anti-spam Turing test/captcha system similar to the one we have… all of which would work within Moveable Type (TypeKey is not an option)?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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http://www.phpbb.com/ ?
I just need an alternative commenting system, not a full blown bulletin board package… thanks anyway though.
Use wordpress. I looked at movable type when I was switching my blog and after asking around found it to be full of these little foibles/glitches. WP is far more flexible and its free too.
other than that you could try HaloScan.
HaloScan dunno how amenable you’d be to having you’re comments stored somewhere else though.
WordPress is unsuitable for a large group blog and in any case, I am not looking for a major IT project (i.e. moving 8,000+ articles and 130,000+ comments). I just want a locally stored comment system, just like we have, only one that also allows for push-button formatting for FireFox users.
This is not my area of expertize, however, perhaps here is where you will find what you are looking for? Specifically, ajaxify appears promising; EnhancedEntryEditing (using TinyMCE) seems to meet the specified parameters (asuming I understood them correctly). You can find an example using TinyMCE here and it definitely works with Firefox (at least 1.5.0.7).
If for some reason this isn’t to your satisfaction, get back to me and I’ll try to find something else. 🙂
P.S. I’m back. I hope that the lack of brilliant insight caused by my extended absence has not lost you too many visitor. 😛
You should also look into getting that blasted “smite control” fixed; I seem to trigger it nearly every time I post one of my ever so insightful comments.
I bet this post, which has comparatively little of value, shall pass by without any problem (unlike my better work).
Smite control works just fine, thanks 😀
Sorry about posting twice before, it didn’t come up the first time.
As to the smite control, having the page that comes up automatically redirect you back to the post you were reading (and commenting on) might be an idea, as it is you have to go back to the home page and find the post yourself, which is a mild irritant.
I whole-heartedly second Perry’s assertion posted above.
i looked at your htmltools.js and changed a bunch of functions so it should work with firefox. can’t promise it will work everywhere i’m not too flash with javascript.
htmltools.js
I don’t know. Looking for free advice huh? Free consultancy?
Bet doctors find you a horror at dinner parties too.
I don’t charge you for commenting here.
I was about to suggest what drscroogemcduck did. The only apparent issue is that the formating scripting was not written to work with Firefox. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater and go for a whole new commenting system? Do you junk your car every time you get a flat tyre?
Rich
It looks like pretty basic JavaScript. Let me try a few things in Firefox.
OK, I think I have something. The script does not return focus to the comment box. This statement seems to be the problem: [document.comments_form.text.focus();]. I suspect you need to declare the the comments form as a text box object. You can do this outside the functions so it applies to all functions.
The rest of this comment is a test.
This is supposed to be a blockquote.
This, on the other hand, is supposed to reference a link.
Whereas this is a bold comment, isn’t it?
Do you feel like italics tonight?
A) HTML ain’t that hard.
B) The instructions are already provided.
C) It doesn’t take that much longer to type.
D) If the extra typing dissuades you from commenting, maybe what you had to say wasn’t that important.
The smite control seems to be triggered by posts long enough to contain a thought more complex than “I like pie,” as well as posts that are well referenced using large amounts of links. Encountering a smite control is quite unpleasant as it opens up the possibility that my brilliant work may be forever lost, a loss to humanity comparable to the impending distruction of the Louvre at the hands of the Ummah. As basic classical conditioning theory tells us, if you repeatedly and systematically punish an individual for carrying out an act (in this particular case, for daring to express complex thoughts), they will eventually stop carrying out that action. Therefore, as time approaches infinity, the comments on this blog will approach “I like pie” (or perhaps “I like Allah” as once the demographics eventually flip, some people will be more than happy to get their four beatable wives and security guarantees in exchange for whatever shred of freedom of thought or individualism they may have left) and you shall have brought it all upon yourselves by not heeding my prophetic words, and fixing the smite control system. 🙂
As for the suggestions offered by others (attempting to fix the javascript currently in use), I put it to you that while such a task is feasible, it is akin to polishing a turd (or attempting to reform Islam, if you prefer). The plugin I proposed would provide a WYSIWYG system, which is obviously far superious to having to look at html while trying to compose your thoughts; certainly, other great thinkers, such as the John Locke or Adam Smith did not have to put up with anything approaching that level of inconvenience while composing their dissertations (nor did they have to put up with a blasted “smite control” system, for that matter). 🙂
The WYSIWYG system would also eliminate the awkward “type; preview; if you feel like correcting anything: type some more, goto 1” system currently in place, disposing of the static preview (which is triggered by pressing the preview button) with a persistent, dynamic WYSIWYG system.
The time has come for the old, immoral system be deposed, through the means of violent revolution, and the new, utopian system, described in this manifesto, installed in its place. Who’s with me? 🙂
I second the suggestion to use TinyMCE. it works very well and the documentation is reasonable.
But I like pie and have nothing against other people who do likewise.
I like pie, too – just bought two of my favorite chicken pies at the farmstand this afternoon. My wife baked several Swedish (or Impossible) Apple Pies as well.
I posed this question to someone who knows stuff, and will be getting a script he says can handle this. The script will need to be pruned back, since it does all sorts of extra things like browser sniffing and calling php functions, but I am assured the bits you need are somewhere in the code. Let’s see what he comes up with.
If he fails me, you may want to call the Dissident Frogman. He knows more about web coding than nearly anyone else on the planet.
I like pie too.
Pecan Pie.
YUM.
Smite Control hardly ever affects me, so I don’t care.
Re: pie
After enduring the horrors of all of those smite controls, I too am starting to develop a fondness for pie. 😛
Pie ackbar!
Then again, perhaps a Rose of Mohammed may taste better.
Anyways, Perry (if that is your real name), have you decided what you are going to do about the comment system yet? As can be seen by Aegir Hallmundur’s endorsement, my proposal seems to be gaining momentum. The mob has spoken; now it’s up to you: thumbs up, or thumbs down? 🙂
Concerning Smite Control, and having discussed this with Perry, the only outstanding problem I have is how long it takes for manual checking of the attempted comment posting. This is typically 3 hours.
The comment then appears in the correct time sequence (that’s typically 3 hours ago, which is probably the best choice). This means that, in a typical fast-moving comversation, gems might be lost, or lost in effect.
Now, if there always was a duty Samizdatista (24 hours a day, which there may well be), could s/he not look more frequently.
Even better, could not an email be sent to the duty Samizdatista, indicating that Smite Control action was required. Such emails would, of course, only be sent for those higher-scoring comments than still get hit by the wonderful algorithms of Smite Control.
Finally, if there is a substantial delay before the comment appears, could not an addition comment, correctly positioned in the time-line, be posted automatically to link back to it.
The world would be perfect, if only everyone else tried really hard!
Best regards
TinyMCE and FCKeditor both work with Firefox. You’ll probably want to strip down the toolbars to just the elements you need. I’ve integrated both with several CMS systems and will look at the work needed if you like.
Here’s a more detailed answer.
The javascript functions in the file http://www.samizdata.net/blog/js/htmltools.js (which gives you the formatting widgets in the comments pop-up) use Internet Explorer-only DOM stuff, specifically document.selection, whereas other browsers use document.getSelection
So, you need to add a function to parse the browser (which can be done in javascript) and offer the correct DOM hierarchy. This could all be done within htmltools.js giving you one file only to edit.
That’s a lot easier than trying to integrate a third party wysiwyg html editor with lots of bells you don’t need.
It also leaves the Turing test (eh?) anti spam thingie unaffected.