'Rich' Editor feedback.

masonic · 2 February at 4:41PM

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81866359#Comment_81866359

@MSE_Stephen If you do put in a feature request, could you please consult with the wider forum user base? I would be opposed to completely removing paragraph spacing, which will apply to historic posts (including those made under the old editor where this feature also existed) making them a lot more difficult to read. But I would not be opposed to the spacing being reduced from 1em to 0.5em or 0.2em. This is something you can probably configure right now. You could probably also set it to zero, but I would plead with you not to do that for readability's sake.

@Midnighter said:
"It's a modern feature of most text editors, including MS Word and free alternatives, but not that modern as the last forum editor had it too (though it was applied unpredictability after you hit post - causing people to have to go back and edit in extra spacing when it occasionally didn't work). It avoids the "wall of text" effect you get when paragraphs are stacked tightly together. It's seen on most websites today. MS Word 2007 first introduced it to the word processor as the default."
Selectively quoting @masonic, because I don't want to quote everything, but that's not how I recall the previous MSE update. Yes, it had double line spacing when initially launched, but it was very quickly switched back to single line spacing.

This system, shift+enter, is just another way of complicating what was a relatively simple system.

It was not switched back. Here is a post of mine from just before the switch that someone has quoted:

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81852463/#Comment_81852463

Here is what the initial post and quote look like:

Here is what it looks like when I click edit:

The paragraph spacing was applied when I first posted and has been there throughout, yet the spacing wasn't extra line breaks inserted by me (as you can see from the quote and editor view). This is how it has always been with the previous editor. The only difference with the new editor is you now see them before you save/post, whereas before you didn't have that early feedback.

I note that if you follow the link to the thread in question, DRS replied below these two posts and put extra manual line breaks in (because it is not apparent the editor would do that). Before this edit, it was all too common for people to have posts like this, or have to go back and edit out the extra line breaks. At least now WYSIWYG, and we have options between the extremes of no paragraph spacing vs whole line space between paragraphs.

weenancyinAmerica · 2 February at 10:14PM

The whole thing was written by the Tech Person - for a Tech person. It is not intuitive at all. It needs to be rewritten by a normal person for normal people, remembering a number of us are over 50 and many of us are over 70. Maybe you should take a survey of ages.

Eco_Miser · 2 February at 11:52PM

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867445#Comment_81867445

Are you suggesting that old people can't handle tech, despite computers having been consumer products for over 45 years and office products even longer? I'm 76.

But really, what part of it do you think is for Tech people only? The terrible quoting system isn't for Tech people (who under the previous editor could do all sorts of things to make the display more to their liking). The emojis are hardly for tech people.

vacheron · 3 February at 12:10AM

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867524#Comment_81867524

I’m over 59 (52) and have just finished a two hour Fallout 76 online gaming session on my self built, liquid cooled, gaming PC.

My mum however is 78… so she mainly games on her iPad, and primarily uses her use her PC for video editing and writing SQL databases!

70 now is not what 70 was thirty years ago 😊

weenancyinAmerica · 3 February at 3:43AM

I take it that knowing these shortcuts is intuitive and understood by everyone then.

"In addition, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts:

ctrl+b or ⌘+b for bold.
ctrl+i or ⌘+i for italic.
ctrl+k or ⌘+k to display the link menu, where you can enter a URL and text to display."

I am 78 and have been taking computer classes for twelve years with perfect scores. And no, I didn't know that ctrl +k or whatever that symbol is would display the link menu. Didn't come naturally to me. Did it really to you.

masonic · 3 February at 5:13AM

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81867560#Comment_81867560

I didn't know about Ctrl+k, nor do I need to in order to use the forum competently. I doubt I'll use it going forward as it is easier for me to use the link button, or simply paste a URL and press Space or Enter. I do not object to there being a keyboard shortcut for the same functionality. I don't see the harm to those who won't use it.

I do regularly use Ctrl+b and Ctrl+i when not on a mobile. These are fairly common knowledge and in common use across many tools. But the bold and italic buttons are equally easy to use. This is unchanged from the old editor.

MollyR · 3 February at 7:43AM

I am 77, and my generation was the first which widely understood (and largely discovered, or initiated) coding. But from what I see in the world around me, the rising generation will not code. They will use AI to do it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this new interface had been written with much of the code being produced by AI like Claude - trained by techies, writing for techies, but next generation's techies won't understand it.