Gaming Outpost Discussions

1. 

   M. J. Young
   Moderator

   I was wondering why we use the codes "em" and "strong" instead of "i" and "b" (and of course "u"). The emphasis and strong codes strike me as very unusual--I've never used them elsewhere, and the result is I frequently use the italics and bold codes by mistake (or worse, I'll remember to use the irregular versions to open but then use the regular ones to close, and have to go back and edit to get it right).

   I don't know what control you have over permitted markup, but those simple text formatting codes would be a big help, I think. (They do work on the articles side, which leaves me the more perplexed as to why they don't work here; but then, we can't do tables here, and although tables would be really useful at times you usually can't do them on forums so I'm not really surprised.)

   Thanks.

   --M. J. Young

   Thu May 20 2010 10:37 pm #
2. 

   JTM
   Member

   It looks like the reason is that the posts simply get their text placed directly into the HTML for the page, and this version of HTML has the permitted markups as reserved keywords.

   Strictly speaking, I think you may be able to do tables on here simply by typing the correct HTML into the post, but the javascript for making a post may remove all the other markups to prevent someone from finding a way to hack the server by posting.

   test:
   <table border="1">
   <tr>
   <td>row 1, cell 1</td>
   <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
   <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
   </tr>
   </table>

   EDIT: yup, the mysterious javascript call replaces other < and > characters with their hex values instead of treating them as code. So it seems the answer may very well be no control at all.

   Mon May 24 2010 9:26 pm #
3. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Myspace accepts the em and strong codes. I used them in coding on my page.

   Mon May 24 2010 9:32 pm #
4. 

   M. J. Young
   Moderator

   I think I phrased the question poorly. I am aware that the reason I use the "em" and "strong" codes is because the "i" and "b" codes are stripped in the posting process. What I don't understand is why the forum allows the first two and not the other two.

   I realize that someone had to code the forum software (and I don't know whether it was the Gaming Outpost managers or the forum software designers) so that it would block html coding that might be dangerous, and that the easy way to do this is to convert the greater than and less than symbols into the greater than and less than symbol codes so they would be displayed as the symbols rather than treated as code objects. It's pretty obvious that the easy way is to tell the system to do that for every use of those symbols, and then write in the exceptions--which are written it so that the coding will recognize the strong and emphasis codes and all the basic codes for standard and numbered lists and the blockquote codes and links (in a modified form). I've never attempted to include an image object, so I don't know if you can do that, but the point is that these have to have been entered individually as exceptions for them to work. So the question is, why aren't the much more common text formatting codes accepted? Is there some danger that might be exploited through them? Is it just that someone didn't want to bother including them since they duplicate the codes already included? I made the mistake again yesterday, using "i" instead of "em", because I'm really quite accustomed to writing text in html code but have always used the shorter formatting codes.

   And perhaps more to the point, is there some reason why the software can't be made to accept those codes?

   Thanks.

   --M. J. Young

   Tue May 25 2010 9:23 pm #
5. 

   JTM
   Member

   Well, it'd certainly be possible to make the system accept those codes if the gaming outpost managers have access to the source code for the javascript that handles the actual posting and the HTML version that works with the current system recognizes those codes. It's likely possible to do so even if those codes aren't recognized, but considerably more complicated and computationally expensive, quite possibly requiring a find-replace, same if they don't have the source code.

   As for why they weren't included in the first place, I'd guess it was a matter of not wanting to bother with duplication and expending the needed additional time to execute the posting code, potentially about doubling it. I am reasonably sure that the common text formatting codes are not exploitation risks, although it's pretty hard to say that with certainty. I'd have thought that the user entering too large a value was not a risk, but apparently some systems are structured so that it's possible to get operating system level access by doing that.

   Tue May 25 2010 9:56 pm #
6. 

   Aaron Powell
   Administrator

   The reason u, b, and i aren't supported is kind of a two part answer. First, the forums only support a subset of the HTML markup, which is typical for forums everywhere. That's why you can't build tables. Second, for b/u/i specifically, those tags have long been deprecated in the HTML spec, replaced with em and strong. The idea is that, as HTML moved to a true content markup language, you'd use tags to tell the browser what kind of text it is (a heading, a paragraph, emphasized, strong emphasis, etc.) and then use a separate stylesheet to say what that should look like from a design perspective. Most of the time this has the effect of meaning that em looks italicized and strong looks bolded. But that can be changed in the CSS (it isn't here).

   While I do have access to the source of everything running this site, hacking it to support deprecated tags (which have been deprecated for almost a decade now) is probably more work than its worth.

   Wed May 26 2010 2:21 am #
7. 

   JohnA1nut
   Member

   Personally, I know I prefer these to the [ ] tags we used to use. The < and > are much easier to find on the keyboard.

   (Doing Therapy)

   Wed May 26 2010 2:24 am #
8. 

   Max
   Member

   The link below could help for those who is interested in allowing such tags.
   How to allow extra tags.

   Wed May 26 2010 5:44 am #
9. 

   M. J. Young
   Moderator

   Thanks, Aaron. That's what happens when you learn a relatively new coding language and aren't in the field--I use it every day, but I don't keep abreast of developments, so I'm still using the old codes. I've noticed that some of the old instructions don't seem to work (I've tried elsewhere using a numbered list with a high start number and a step -1 instruction, and Firefox doesn't recognize the code, although I'm sure I used it somewhere years ago).

   I think it foolish to eliminate shorter codes and replace them with longer ones; it just creates code bloat. But I understand the reasoning, even though I think HTML ought to work better on its own, no CSS required.

   Thanks for answering. I'll live with it, even though I'm using the "old" code everywhere else.

   --M. J. Young

   Thu May 27 2010 2:17 am #
10. 

    JohnA1nut
    Member

    Mistake.

    (Doing Therapy)

    Thu May 27 2010 2:25 am #

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