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message board

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:14 am
by speedy33417
I'd like to create a very basic message board, granting basic ability to the user writing the message to change character setup, such as: bold, italic, font color, line breaks, maybe emoticons.

I'm no expert programmer, but I get around using html and php. However, my guess is that I'm going to have to use another language, such as javascript to get to my goal.

I'd hate to advise them to use html tags, so probably [] tags would work fine for me.
Any thoughts or previous attempts anyone?

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:19 am
by Kieran Huggins
simple markup schemes already exists that make it easy for users to make *bold* and _italic_ text. Emoticons are a no-brainer to replace.

Font color is perhaps the only exotic element you're mentioning - but if it's important maybe you should consider using a heavier syntax. There was another thread on this earlier today.

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:42 am
by speedy33417
Thanks Kieran,

I read the other forum that helped a bit. I do have a few questions however.

1) Do line breaks appear in any way in normal html input textarea/php echo set up?

2) What language/tutorial should I look at for placing tags (from a list like on this site) in my input textarea without refreshing the page?

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:10 pm
by Kieran Huggins
1: no, unless you use nl2br() to change your "newline" characters into "<br/>" tags ;-)

2: javascript is the best option there - maybe you could use a rich textarea replacement like FCKeditor and modify the code to use bbcode instead of HTML

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:50 pm
by RobertGonzalez
TinyMCE is better than FCKEditor, in that it works in Opera.

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:11 pm
by Kieran Huggins
Awesome I'll check it out. Thanks Everah!

Turns out it supports bbcode to a degree:
http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/Tin ... ins/bbcode

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:28 pm
by speedy33417
Thanks everyone!

Everah, I tried tinyMCE and I love it!!! It was so easy to add to the site, and it does exactly what I wanted to do. I'm glad I didn't have to spend weeks making one that probably wouldn't come close to this one.

Anyway, thanks again.

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:34 pm
by RobertGonzalez
You got it.