'Rich' Editor feedback.

MSE_Stephen

Hi everyone

We have just switched over the forum editor to the latest version, known as the 'Rich Editor'.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6635222/rich-editor-help-guide

UPDATE: New Rich Editor Feedback board

The new Rich Editor Feedback board is now live.
I've added just a couple of bugs as an example.

Please post any issues you have over there. On Monday I’ll go through this thread too, in case there’s anything missing.

If you can, please add as much context as possible so the issue is clear and easy to understand - but please don’t be put off posting if that isn’t possible.

UPDATE: Why we have changed the editor

The old editor

We’ve been using the legacy ‘WYSIWYG’ editor for years. It hasn’t had meaningful updates in a long time, and it’s become increasingly buggy and fragile, especially on newer browsers and devices. Many members think it's fine but don't hear the regular complaints we receive - that it's not working on X device, or version of Android/iOS - That words disappear, @mentioning a user is impossible , and many, many other issues. 

Why we have to switch

We first tried moving to a new editor in April 2023, but rolled it back because the experience wasn’t good enough.

Since then we’ve intentionally delayed another attempt for as long as we could. But we’re now at the point where the old editor isn’t properly supported and keeping it running is getting harder.

Many fixes and improvements members have asked for are actually available from our forum provider and have been for some time, but they only work with the newer editor. Staying on the old one blocks those changes and increases the risk of more breakages.

Quotations

We hear you on quotations - it was the biggest issue last time and we expected it would be again.

We’ve raised this strongly with our forum provider, but the current quoting behaviour is tied to the new editor and is the version they’ve chosen.

Please keep sharing specific examples of what’s not working for you - we’ll continue feeding them back and pushing for improvements.

Thanks for bearing with us.

Section62

The post quoting feature needs to be improved. There's nothing worse than having to scroll past page after page of long posts being quoted, apart perhaps from posts/quotes that don't identify who the original poster was.

Under the old system it was easy to quote a post and just delete irrelevant text (or images) - but the new way means either quoting the whole post, or using the MSE suggested workaround of manually copying the text into a quote, in which case the original poster information is lost.

Also, how is it now possible to quote two (or more) original posts in one reply - particularly if the two posts are by different forum members?

(and isn't this rich editor the one the forum switched to before, and then reverted back to the old one because it was so problematic?)

MyRealNameToo

Agree with the above, not being able to edit the quoted post, or at a minimum highlight the relevant part, is going to be a major frustration as inevitably it will bloat messages and make it unclear which part someone is responding to so inevitably we will get those making wrong assumptions as to which bit the reply relates to.

Grumpy_chap

Thanks but why, why, why?

The new quoting feature is appalling. Absolutely anything but intuitive if you want to highlight part of a post or only quote part of a post. Far more complicated than it used to be, so much so that I will just quote whole posts which I know will make the forum less flowing and less readable but that is the decision of the forum team.

I know that @MSE_Stephen commented on this in the other thread about the fonts:

I would have added a link to the previous thread but realise that cannot be done and leave just a link but only a whole embedded thread so I had to delete the link.

I also tried to copy the previous post as a quote from the other thread to here to link the two comments but that is also not possible to do by any vaguely intuitive method.

Sometimes, you may wish to respond separately to two parts of a post and previously that was easy but no longer. As per this example I did this morning prior to the new editor going live:

Oh bother bother bother bother - another link that I cannot paste to give full context as an example because instead of a concise link I get a massive graphical mess which I had to delete.

The link might be possible to work out from here:

forums.moneysavingexpert .com/discussion/comment /81855989#Comment_81855989

Obviously, that was anything but easy for me to share as a link and, frankly, not in any way user friendly for readers to follow as they need to take the components and concatenate back together in their browser address bar.

Does no-one at MSE Towers bother to test these updates before rolling them out?

noitsnotme

This feels like a step backwards. Why, when the previous functionality was ok?

flaneurs_lobster

Copied this from another thread. The fact that it took three attempts and I still buggered it up kind of makes the point…

Can I be the first to post that the new Rich Editor is pants?

Seriously, I get that in order to quote a previous post I can no longer just hit "Quote" then edit the copied text, the text must be copied from the original then inserted as a quote. Not seeing how to include the author of the quoted text.

So I can copy and quote MSE_Stephen's post from the post above

Hi @saajan_12

There's a thread here for feedback on the new Rich Editor

but there's no attribution, which the old "Quote" button would include by default.

born_again

Totally agree. If you can't highlight, or edit a quote to just a certail part. Then people will either use copy & paste (not always helpful on multi page thread) or just simply post & have others scratching their heads as to what the reply is about (get enough of that now)

Please revert back to old system then look at making changes to the new system.

MyRealNameToo

Another factor… is there a way to stop you being quoted as being flagged as someone mentioning you? Previously a quote didnt cause a notification and there doesnt seem to be a way to stop it in the notification settings.

Section62

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81856153#Comment_81856153

Yes, if every time you are quoted by someone will generate a mention notification it will make the whole mention system a pointless irritation. Getting an alert when someone really wants to get your attention is too useful to be spoilt by semi-random alerts, possibly to posts you have zero interest in reading.

ColdIron

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81856131#Comment_81856131

Someone above said something that I can't even copy/paste along the lines of "may I be the first to say the new text editor is pants"
I second this, it's unusable. Please roll it back until it can be made to work properly or just dump it

I don't know what problem it solves but we have lost a lot of functionality

It's odd that when we switched from the old system quite a while back now that one of its problems was users entered text in the quoted part rather than below it. A lot of work was put into solving that problem and it worked very well. Now we have a system that seems to make quoting impossible in a practical sense

Dear MSE, please listen to us (and you know in your heart it's, as someone said above, pants)

NoMore

The enshitification continues.

Absolutely appalling update, no apparent gain for users but hell of a lot of loss.