Forum posting bug

[Lingus]

This happens when posting a long post, about over twice as long as the post box is. Once the text gets to that point, the scroll bar will start jumping back up to a few lines above. As I type it will jump between that point and the end of the post so I can only see what I'm typing for a split second each time I press a key.

I'm using IE8... but just to get this out of the way please don't say "Use FF!" or any such nonsense. As far as I'm concerned if a website doesn't work for IE it fails. It should work for all major browsers. If there's a fix for this I would like to know rather than just be told to use a browser that it already works for, because I'm not going to switch my preferred browser for a single problem on a single website.

Thanks.

[Mr Pwnage]

This happens when posting a long post, about over twice as long as the post box is. Once the text gets to that point, the scroll bar will start jumping back up to a few lines above. As I type it will jump between that point and the end of the post so I can only see what I'm typing for a split second each time I press a key.

I'm using IE8... but just to get this out of the way please don't say "Use FF!" or any such nonsense. As far as I'm concerned if a website doesn't work for IE it fails. It should work for all major browsers. If there's a fix for this I would like to know rather than just be told to use a browser that it already works for, because I'm not going to switch my preferred browser for a single problem on a single website.

Thanks.

I had the EXACT same problem on my old computer. What you do is go into IE settings...and somewhere, there is a button to turn off auto scrolling, so click that. Sorry I don't remember how to get to it though...I use Firefox so I can't really check for you...I had to uninstall IE cause it kept crashing my 64 bit OS. If all else fails, you can just type your messages in a text pad and paste them all in at once...which is what I did till I fixed it. Hope this helps...sorry I can't tell you exactly how though. :/

[Lingus]

Just did some further research. Didn't find anything regarding disabling Auto-scroll. If you could find where that is and let me know it'd help.

Every post I've found that states a possible solution says to change the actual HTML of the form. Obviously this is not a possibility. This means that SMF would have to update their HTML. It means that literally every forum software would have to update their HTML to accomodate how IE8 deals with text forms.

I'll continue looking into this.

Edit: Apparently SMF is aware of the issue: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=331832.0

They supposedly plan to modify the CSS as mentioned in other workarounds I found.

Microsoft is aware of the issue as well: http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=432377

On that link you can see that they said they could reproduce the problem and would "investigate further". That was in April.

We'll see...

[Meiun]

Yep, I noticed it with IE8. When I use Google Chrome it works fine though.

[Mr Pwnage]

Actually I think I am referring to Firefox with autoscroll...IE8 doesn't have it...Despite your love for IE8...I think you need a new browser to fix the problem. And though I know I am going against what you said...I dont see why you like IE8. Firefox is so much faster, and if you have favorites and stuff on IE8, you can transfer them all to firefox with one click. Idk, it's worth a try but do as you wish.

[Meiun]

As people stated earlier, I'm pretty sure it's more of an issue SMF compatibility with certain browsers, not the browsers themselves (not that it makes a big difference either way). Also, it isn't that I "love IE" or anything, I just don't really care enough to bother use anything else. A browser shows webpages, and (for the most part atleast) unless your a dumbass it will do so plenty securely, so what difference does it make which one you use? Also, I have no idea why people say Firefox is faster, because from what I understand it is an established fact that it is a fair amount slower (definitely might be wrong on this though). I am quite sure that it is at the least a fair amount slower compared to IE8 (which is currently one of the fastest browsers out there along with Chrome). All I know, is that I did decide to try out Firefox a few times in the past and it always annoyed me how long it took to start up, so I just said screw it :P

[Lingus]

As mentioned, I'm not changing browsers. I have tried other browsers in the past and I am happy with IE. I have plenty of experience with computers and software. I know what's what. There's no use trying to convince me to use one product over another. Hence why I attempted to head those kinds of posts off before they happened.

As far as this issue, I do believe it is not specific to SMF. It was stated that they found the same issue to be the case in several other forum softwares when using IE8. There is a workaround to make the webpage compatible with IE8... so you could technically call it a browser compatibility issue with the forum software... but it's definitely something new in IE8 that basically broke all text box scrolling as they were previously coded.

Meiun, not sure if you're interested or capable, but it seems to be a fairly simple fix with the CSS. Check out this page:

http://grantovich.net/posts/2009/06/that-weird-ie8-textarea-bug/

The code box there shows how to change textarea so it will work.

If you can modify the CSS of the site you'd be a step ahead of SMF... If not, it's no big deal.

[Meiun]

Ah okay, I guess I misread some then. I will take a look at it once I get the chance. In the mean time you can apparently get a quick fix by running the page in compatibility view.

[Torch]

If you're going to type a post that large, you may want to consider typing it up in notepad beforehand for safety if anything. From there, you can just copypasta into the post box.

[Mr Pwnage]

This happens when posting a long post, about over twice as long as the post box is. Once the text gets to that point, the scroll bar will start jumping back up to a few lines above. As I type it will jump between that point and the end of the post so I can only see what I'm typing for a split second each time I press a key.

I'm using IE8... but just to get this out of the way please don't say "Use FF!" or any such nonsense. As far as I'm concerned if a website doesn't work for IE it fails. It should work for all major browsers. If there's a fix for this I would like to know rather than just be told to use a browser that it already works for, because I'm not going to switch my preferred browser for a single problem on a single website.

Thanks.

I had the EXACT same problem on my old computer. What you do is go into IE settings...and somewhere, there is a button to turn off auto scrolling, so click that. Sorry I don't remember how to get to it though...I use Firefox so I can't really check for you...I had to uninstall IE cause it kept crashing my 64 bit OS. If all else fails, you can just type your messages in a text pad and paste them all in at once...which is what I did till I fixed it. Hope this helps...sorry I can't tell you exactly how though. :/

If you're going to type a post that large, you may want to consider typing it up in notepad beforehand for safety if anything. From there, you can just copypasta into the post box.

Idea stealer. D:

And if your adamant about keeping IE8, run an older version of it because that problem is a new one like you said. Idk...thing is the problem is basically out of anyone here's control unless you switch browsers, which you obviously aren't...so I don't think much can be done for you...sorry.

[sly 3 4 me]

I used to have this problem on my older laptop while using IE8 on it. I had a problem with the Laptop and decided to reformat it. I'm not sure why it would happen, but after I reformatted the problem was gone. The reformat was for something else, but a few months later I did decide to try out FireFox. It does have a long start-up, but I found that if you download FireFox pre-loader it took around the same time as Internet Explorer would take to boot up.  :)

[Meiun]

Browsers are browses jeeze. I don't think anyone wants to downgrade their new and faster browser just to fix a rare text glitch on stick-online.com. I'm a computer science major and I still don't care enough to bother change off IE in most cases. Such a browser racist Mr_Pwnage!!

[Mr Pwnage]

Such a browser racist Mr_Pwnage!!

Haha! Most definitely.

[Lingus]

I actually do use notepad to write out longer posts. I just would like to be able to use the browser instead.

I'll have to try compatibility view. For some reason I don't have it on this computer, but I do on my other ones. Btw, Pwnage, considering IE8 has compatibility view there's absolutely no reason to downgrade. And even if it doesn't work, I'm still not going to. It's a pretty small issue to go through that much trouble.

[Scotty]

As people stated earlier, I'm pretty sure it's more of an issue SMF compatibility with certain browsers, not the browsers themselves (not that it makes a big difference either way).

This is not an SMF compatibility issue, this is a problem with IE8.  IE8 has a well known issue dealing with <textarea> objects in webpages, and it's pasted all over Google.  A bug was reported to Microsoft regarding this issue, and there hasn't been any workarounds/resolutions as of yet it appears:

http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=432377

I could think of a couple of Javascript workarounds that are possible, but nothing that is worth the effort, as this bug will surely be resolved, and it would just be a wasted effort.

EDIT: I found a CSS Hack that might potentially fix the problem.  I'm gonna give it a go on another team of mine's forum and see if it yields a resolution, if so, I will let you all know.