CoH: Homecoming BBCoder - New Tool!

As I was getting irritated with the forum's lack of a built in BBCode editor, and I was looking for a way to help serve the community, I figured I'd make just a basic one. So, here it is, the...

CoH: Homecoming BBCoder!

The tool offers the following BBCodes:

Bold	Italic	Underline
Strikethru	Font Size	Font Color
Center	Horizontal Rule	Image -
Link

Code

Quote

[move]Marquee[/move]

[*]List

[*]List

[*]List

Plus, a special "Table Wizard" that will automatically create a table for you, using Tabs as column indicators and newlines/returns as row indicators (just highlight the

text that you want to be Tablefied!

The first button on the main toolstrip is just a Clear button and the last two are for a Preview window, and to copy all of the text from the main textbox to your clipboard. You can see the Preview button right next to the

main program in action in the screenshot above.

Something else that you should know about this program is that if you keep typing and typing and typing, after about 200 characters, a newline/return will be AUTOMATICALLY inserted for you. I've added

this "feature", because I noticed that when you go over about 200 characters, the text box goes all the way to the right on the forums, and things start to break. Once the admins fix that problem, I'

ll take away this "feature". I've also restricted the textbox to 20,000 characters total, which is the limit for one post on the Homecoming forums.

Let me know if you see any bugs that I haven't already described above, or any additional features that you'd like. This is of course just an initial alpha version.

DOWNLOAD LINK

By the way, if you couldn't tell already, this post was of course made with the BBCoder. :p

[move]FREEM!!![/move]

Source Code

BBCoder Portable

I could've sworn this forum had a WYSIWYG editor before, where'd it go?

Maybe you're thinking of the forum for the LAST private server?

You mean Bree? I guess I must be, I didn't realize there was really any difference.

The forum has a built-in code editor, but it's not WYSIWYG. For some reason the script is being served from the forum IP ( 178.62.209.170 ) rather than the score.savecoh.com domain - your browser may be blocking it as a result.

Another odd thing I noticed is that these forums don't have a word wrap.  Seems to be OK when saved, though.

Yeah, it looks like the editor is completely replaced in 2.1 (we're in 2.0 now):

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Differences_between_SMF_2.1_and_SMF_2.0

Also, there's a TON more spam protections in 2.1 and other great QoL stuff. Here's the pertinent items:

[*]A new WYSIWYG editor SCEditor

[*]Google Authenticator for two-factor logins

[*]Improved spam defenses, registration will be blocked if a user tries to register too quickly and also inept bots can be tripped up by hidden form variables.

[*]Anti spam Q&A should now be able to support multiple languages (different questions per language) as well as multiple answers per language

Can we PRETTY PLEASE upgrade to 2.1???

You can get it here, Miss or Mister Admin: https://download.simplemachines.org/ :)

I just updated the tool to restrict its text limit to 20,000 characters - the same limit as the forum's limit per post, so that you don't have to "guess" anymore. If it fits inside this program's textbox, it'll fit inside a post!

Yeah, it looks like the editor is completely replaced in 2.1 (we're in 2.0 now):

 

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Differences_between_SMF_2.1_and_SMF_2.0

 

Also, there's a TON more spam protections in 2.1 and other great QoL stuff. Here's the pertinent items:

[*]A new WYSIWYG editor SCEditor

[*]Google Authenticator for two-factor logins

[*]Improved spam defenses, registration will be blocked if a user tries to register too quickly and also inept bots can be tripped up by hidden form variables.

[*]Anti spam Q&A should now be able to support multiple languages (different questions per language) as well as multiple answers per language

Can we PRETTY PLEASE upgrade to 2.1???

 

You can get it here, Miss or Mister Admin: https://download.simplemachines.org/ :)

I was looking at that yesterday, and it looks nice, but I thought I saw somewhere that there was a warning like "2.1 is in beta and is not ready for production. Stick to 2.0 until there is a stable release."

I could be getting mixed up. I was also look at different software for work yesterday to replace some things there and could be swapping them in my head.

No, it's in beta. But a beta mostly working forum is better than the forum we have now with spambots and a broken editor...

No, it's in beta. But a beta mostly working forum is better than the forum we have now with spambots and a broken editor...

You're not wrong, I just wonder how much is actually done. If it's missing some key stuff then it's a moot point.

I have some experience tinkering with forum systems, albeit old school experience and Simple Machines looks alot like Invision Power Board.

If you guys want someone dedicated to keeping the forums themself running smoothly, I'll gladly help :)

Yeah, I offered that as well myself, and they weren't biting. I think they want to keep things clost to the vest for now, which I understand considering the last server got wiped on a whim.

That being said... UPDATE!!!

As you can see in my modified OP, I've corrected ALL of the issues with the Preview window (took a bit of work, but it was worth it, I think!). So, let me know if you see any further bugs, or if you s

ee any BBCodes that I'm missing somehow. I went poking around and testing, and it looks like this SMF board only uses a SMALL portion of all of the BBCodes that are out there for some reason, so I tri

ed to include all of the ones I could find, though it's certainly possible that I missed some.

Next things on my to-do list might be an undo-redo option. I'm not sure what else users might want in a BBCode editor...

Yeah, I offered that as well myself, and they weren't biting. I think they want to keep things clost to the vest for now, which I understand considering the last server got wiped on a whim.

Thats probably fair, that said, and I forgot to say before, nice tool :)

Wonder why this lost it's sticky-ness?

Maybe I ticked someone off with my comments?

Maybe take out of the installer and make it stand alone (like the hero planner for example) too if possible. :)

Edit: I had unstickied this as, at least to my knowledge, the download was not cleared by staff to ensure that it was safe for the community to download. I will state now that if you download the file in the post you are doing so at your own risk.

 

It's not that I don't trust you, Philotic, we just cannot support runnable downloads from anyone without first being checked up on by the staff. Hopefully you can understand this :)

Makes perfect sense to me, I was just curious when I saw it suddenly drop from the top with no explanation.

Went ahead and fixed the post editor; you should see all of the controls for editing the BBCode now.

 

I will fix the emojis tomorrow.

Ah, well that's all I wanted to begin with! Also, can you fix the "word wrap" bug, where when you type over around 200 characters, the rest of the page disappears and you can't Preview or Post anymore?

Edit: I had unstickied this as, at least to my knowledge, the download was not cleared by staff to ensure that it was safe for the community to download. I will state now that if you download the file in the post you are doing so at your own risk.

 

It's not that I don't trust you, Philotic, we just cannot support runnable downloads from anyone without first being checked up on by the staff. Hopefully you can understand this :)

 

Nice job on the tool though, that was pretty quick!

Oh, I get vetting things. Since it's a moot point anyways since the actual forum software is working again, here's the source code for anyone that wants to do anything with it. I just threw it together in a couple of hours while at work waiting for some processes to complete on my PC. So it's not the prettiest code, but it's functional:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cmzfj71nu4tzjb6/Homecoming%20BBCoder%20Source%20Code.zip?dl=0

I've decided that it was worth it after all to continue this app as a hobby and exercise for myself, so I have. I've updated the program to now handle ALL of the bbCodes that you can see on the current website editor. I've also moved away from using Visual Studio's TERRIBLE "WebBrowser" object, due to known issues with it displaying webpages in "compatibility mode" and breaking CSS. I've left the old PreviewForm inside the solution itself in case I want to re-implement sometime in the future, but for now, I'm "cheating" and just opening up your default browser to "preview" the bbCode.

That being said, why should you use this program rather than just using the editor that's built into the browser? Well, the regular editor is fine for day-to-day users, but heavy users that would like more options and greater versatility should consider this tool. My BBCoder has the following options that the built-in web editor does NOT have:

Auto-restriction of input window to forum post limit of 20,000 characters - don't you hate it when you type out a HUGE monologue about how AWESOME City of Heroes is, and how you'd like to hump it forever, and when you go to hit the "Send" button, the forum tells you it's too long? Well, you won't have that problem if you use the BBCoder, because you WON'T be able to type any text beyond the post limit!

Auto-Lists - This tool gives you the ability to create "auto-lists" in one of two ways.

If you have already typed a bunch of items typed out on individual lines, you can just highlight those lines and hit EITHER of the "List" buttons in the program (either ordered or un-ordered), and your text will be "magically" wrapped in a list, like so:

Peanuts
Toffee
Cookies
Cake
Pie

• Peanuts
  
• Toffee
  
• Cookies
  
• Cake
  
• Pie
  

Auto-Tables/Table Wizard - The same way that you can automatically create lists with the BBCoder, you can also automatically create TABLES! Just make your table by using tabs between columns, and newlines between rows, like so:

this	is	a	really
really	cool	table	that
I	hope	
you	can
	read.

Again, highlight all of the text, click the TableWizard button, and PRESTO! Instant table!

ANY color you can imagine for Text, Shadow, and Glow effects - Right now, the built in editor only lets you choose from 15 predefined colors for font text, and Glow and Shadow effects have no color selector at all. Sure, you can research bbCode and hex color codes and figure it out for yourself, but why do that, when you can make use of Microsoft's color picker to create any color you can imagine in your post?

The BBCoder lets you use that color dialogue for Text Color, Shadow, AND Glow color!

Smilies! Anyone that used the CoH boards should remember Mr. Yellow, the smiley that could! Well, I've built in automatic links to Mr. Yellow into the program, so that you can add any version of him right into your posts anywhere with ease! I'm also considering in a future version a toolbar that lets you create your own "macros" built into the program that allows you to insert your own images into posts with ease from a pre-defined list, but that's coming Soon^tm.

If you don't care about any of that... eh... just use the built in editor, and you'll be just fine.

And for anyone that wanted a version without an installer for some reason... here you go.

I've just added textboxes into the program that allow YOU to control the Line Length and Post Length. By default, these are set to 0 (infinite), and 20,000 respectively.

I've now just added a new toolbar that you can fill with all of your own custom image macros:

First, click this button:

Then, type in the text name for the macro, which will appear on the button for the Macro:

Then type or paste in the URL for the image (the program automatically pastes in your clipboard text):

And then you have a new macro button that can automatically insert the image wherever you want in your post: