BBC Options for News?

[gbsothere]

How hard would it be to create a mod that provides BBC buttons (such as the Signature Dropdown Choice mod) for font colors, URLs, etc., (just some basic options) to be used in the News entry area? 

[Arantor]

I'm not sure what its potential for BBC actually is; I seem to recall having to use raw HTML in the past to do some things concerning links.

[gbsothere]

We use BBC to enter things like colors and logos, etc:




I suppose we could also use HTML.  There's a lot of "copying" an existing entry and just changing the image URL or the color, to keep from having to enter the codes again.

[Arantor]

Hmm, I didn't realise how fully supported it was.

Adding a fuller set of entry boxes shouldn't be *that* hard, just the JS is a little complex to ensure it's always pointing to the right box for you.

[gbsothere]

It will even support animated gifs, although that's a bit unnecessary with the fader.   

Our posters keep up with a lot of recurring shows, sports announcements; that sort of things and so we try to flavor the entries a bit with network logos and enough color to keep it interesting. 



A friend of mine uses his news flasher as an "ad" displayer, although I personally wouldn't want to muck about with TOS.

[Arantor]

Well, an image is an image; neither <img> or the BBcode equivalent know or care to be honest.

I would wonder if it's not worth going for something more specific to your site; even if this mod is implemented as you're suggesting, you're still going to be doing a lot manually.

[gbsothere]

Well, that's true; I feel I spend as much time rotating News, due to ever-changing schedules, etc., as I do tending to any other facet of the forum.  I guess this is probably more a "luxury" mod than a utility mod, since not everyone uses their news flasher to the same extent or even with the same amount of embellishment.  It does get the posters' attention, though, as opposed to plain black font.  They get so used to seeing that out of their peripheral that they forget to notice.

[Arantor]

I was thinking maybe a few custom BBcodes might suit you a little better is all.

If it supports BBcode, which I'm quite likely wrong about - I don't use the news much - a few custom BBcodes might suit you a lot better in terms of effort.

For example, [logo]fox[/logo] perhaps? Pretty much whatever you'd want can be made.

[gbsothere]

That actually sounds perfect!  I do use all BBC code for images, urls, colors, italics, etc.  Just some basic buttons, I think, would be all that's needed.  I don't know if pull-downs would come into play for things like font and color choices but I won't deny that it would be nice. 

[Arantor]

I wasn't going into the buttons aspect - I was going into the realms of setting up custom BBcode first. I'm not sure how much benefit you'd get from custom BBcode + custom buttons though.

[gbsothere]

I suppose I was hoping that just above the top frame (where it says Preview) there might be BBC buttons that interacted with whichever box one happened to be typing in, but I can also see where that might be unrealistic.  I'm not sure how custom BBcode would work without the buttons to activate it but I'm not very knowledgeable about these kinds of things.  Being not much more than a host trying to run a nice forum, I have to rely on the expertise of mod authors.

Anything that would keep me from having to manually type out the code for every entry would be a big help.

[Arantor]

Well... first up, [red] is a bbcode tag, as is [green] (the red tag is auto replaced internally with its color equivalent)

I'm also wondering about a date tag for your Wednesday... bit, e.g. [date]9/23/09[/date].

It would be easier to have the custom tags in place first before attempting buttons.

[gbsothere]

I didn't realize that; that each color, for instance, was its own BBcode.  I guess I thought it would be similar to the way Post.template.php and Post.english.php reference each other using the strings found in Modification.english.php but there's not exactly a News.template.php and News.english.php.  (It's probably not a good idea for SMF to just let dumb forum owners roam around freely in here.) 

We use Kays' Signature Dropdown Choice mod in our profile's signatures and I suppose I thought that it might be the same sort of thing; just some basic embellishment but in the News area.  I don't mind manually typing in things like the date when I'm entering the event, but if a BBcode made that even easier, of course it would be welcome.  The things that we find ourselves having to enter with every News entry are URL, Image URL, Color, Font and an occasional set of italics.  (Pretty much just those, but the News is changed so frequently, it becomes tedious.)  I can achieve that, now, by manually typing in the code, but if there were something "clickable" that would render the tags, that would be much appreciated.

Really, Arantor, whatever you feel is the best way to achieve it; I'd be very grateful.  It's apparent that I don't know enough about this to grasp what you're telling me, but I know that you do.  I know I'd be happy with the results.

[Arantor]

No, News is handled very much on its own, by one of the admin pages IIRC (never looked in huge detail on it)

I guess it comes back to what you have. Do you have a stock set of images to work from, for example?

[gbsothere]

No, I don't really have a stock set of images, although I find that I do use many of the same ones frequently, depending on what we're announcing.  I find something on the Internet that might do well for embellishing the announcement (such as a birthday cake for a special member recognition or the logo of a particular network or sports team) and I resize it and send it up to my server to link to.  I try to keep them all the same uniform size because, although many may not be aware of this, if one news announcement takes up more lines than another (requiring more height for that announcement) then the news field will constantly resize up and down with each flash to accommodate the height.  This causes "page jumps".  I know there is an IE bug that also causes page jumps but another cause of this is when items in the News field differ in content size, creating different different heights. 

*laughing*   All that to say, "No, I don't really have a stock set, but I do use a uniform size".

[Arantor]

Well, the most frequently could be turned straight into tags (or, thinking about it, smileys - just hidden from the post form), e.g. :fox: for the FOX logo - there's even a handy interface for that already, and I'm not sure it's something you'll really be able to make into a useful button if it's not a particularly stock set.

[gbsothere]

That's a thought, creating hidden smileys and posting the tooltips (keeping them simple enough to recall them easily).  I suppose I could create a new smiley set composed of just that sort of thing and make them all hidden?

[Arantor]

I think you'd have to extend the standard set since it'll use whatever your users have as default.

[gbsothere]

That's right; I hadn't thought of that. The whole point is for them be able to see it.   
I just tested this on my test site and using the tooltip code for a hidden "smiley" in the Newsflasher does work well.  I just have to remember to make every entry uniform in content size to keep the page from jumping.

[gbsothere]

I managed to get the BBC buttons and pulldowns to show up on ManageNews.template.php.  I just can't get them to actually interact with the input box.  (They're not "clickable".)  The pulldowns reveal all the expected font face/color/size choices.  But there doesn't seem to be any relationship between them and the input box.  They're "disabled tags", I guess.   

But, hey, I "dabbled"...   even if it doesn't work, it's a nice fake.