Disappearing/Hidden Text

Discussion in 'The Test Bed' started by Junglekeeper, Sep 19, 2016.

  1. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    Last edited: Sep 20, 2016
  2. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Junglekeeper said in a PM:
    Did I understand correctly? Paste it right here? The following line was in quotes in the article.
    plants can better tolerate drought and other stressors with the help of natural microbes, University of Washington research has found. Specifically, plants that are given a dose of microbes stay green longer and are able to withstand drought conditions by growing more leaves and roots and using less water.

    I haven't ever seen this problem, though, and I'm not seeing the problem now, am seeing the pasted text. The colour is rgb 0,0,0 which should be black, font is Arial - it's hard to understand why that should cause a problem. Don't all computers have the Arial font? Is "COLOR=rgb(0,0,0)" non-standard coding in some way? I see some website says it should be "color:rgb(0,0,0)", with a colon instead of an equal sign. Do some browsers not recognize it with the equal sign? Junglekeeper, was it you who said you are using an old browser?

    @Junglekeeper, is that the same coding you see? And can you select the hidden text? Do you see it when you select it? Can you remove the formatting using that Tx button at the upper right, and then does that reveal the text?
     
  3. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    Or did you mean I had to put the text into a quote?
    No, I can still see it. I'm still going with my first theory.
     
  4. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    The problem does not occur when pasting into the BB code editor - only the rich text editor. It should be noted that when the text becomes hidden the cursor also disappears and ctrl-A to select all does not work since there is nothing in the text box. I wonder if @Silver surfer is also using an older browser.

    Edit (2016/09/21): ctrl-A then Backspace does remove all text from the text box and the cursor reappears.

    I repeated the test using three up-to-date browsers in Android. The operation seemed to work properly in Firefox and Android browsers. Chrome also seemed to work but with a quirk. After the test, if I then enter 'j.' into the text box, it is automatically converted to 'waterj.'. Very strange.

    The test:
    1. Copy the above mentioned text from the article.
    2. Paste the text into an empty quick reply text box.
    3. Press ctrl-A to select all, then press Backspace to clear.

    I'm not seeing BB code for color or font so I can't comment on that.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  5. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    OK, why would you enter j. ? No surprise that I did not get waterj. when I entered j. doing your test in Chrome or Edge.

    Thanks for the description of what happens when you tried to select the text. I'm surprised that there is nothing in the text box, yet it's in the BB code. I can understand that there is nothing displayed, but don't understand that there is nothing.
     
  6. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    You normally wouldn't. Stumbled upon it purely by accident while mashing keys during testing. What it shows is, even though the text box had been cleared there was still some hidden text in its buffer. As to why 'j.' brings it out, your guess is as good as mine. However it also ties in with the problem I have with the desktop browser. That is, there is hidden information in the text box buffer that cannot be seen or selected.

    Here's something interesting.

    There isn't a problem when I copy+paste the following 99 characters. The information is displayed as is in the text box.
    However when I copy+paste one extra character for a total of 100, extra information is automatically appended to it (via Javascript in the article page I think) resulting in the following being pasted into the text box.
    My theory is this auto-generated attribution message or the method in which it is injected is the cause of the problem.


    Edit (2016/09/21): The attribution text did not show up during the Android tests.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  7. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    I'm adding a link to the posting that started this investigation:
    Feedback on new Forum Software

    That doesn't explain the original problem, though. @Junglekeeper, after you have been to the BB code editor, when you go back to normal view, is the text still hidden?

    And another question: if you change the code: "color=rgb(0,0,0)" ( or whatever colour codes) to: "color:rgb(0,0,0)", does that make any difference?
     
  8. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    The circumstances of @Silver surfer's problem may be different. We need more information on what actually took place. In my case, the hidden text is revealed after toggling between editors.

    I'm not seeing this sort of coding at all.

    Okay. My theory just went out the window. I encountered the same problem while composing this reply. I opened a new tab by clicking on the Reply link in your previous post, then copy+pasted the quoted information into the quick reply box and, voila, the pasted information was hidden along with the cursor. The problem happened again while editing a prior post in this thread using the 'quick' editor.

    This is all very strange. However I'm not too concerned as the problem can be sidestepped by toggling between editors. It could just be the consequence of using an outdated browser. I don't think it makes much sense to pursue this further in my case. @Silver surfer's problem may be different though and may required further investigation.

    By the way, I've edited a couple of my earlier posts with new information acquired after further testing. Also, the link back to the Feedback thread does not open to the desired post but displays the entire thread from the beginning.
     
  9. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    Almost forgot. As noted in the above correction, all the text in the text box can be selected with ctrl-A but the hidden portion remains hidden and it is not apparent that it has been selected. In fact if there was nothing else other than the pasted information, it is not apparent that ctrl-A did anything. Pressing on Remove Formatting after ctrl-A has no effect.
     
  10. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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    And you're also saying that you don't see any color codes, so at least that makes sense that Remove Formatting has no effect. And it takes my theory out the window too.

    Now I'm getting discouraged about that too. Because I have selected the option to view all postings latest first, which I think is an add-on, since xenForo refuses to consider this a reasonable requirement, I can't keep the page number part of the link, since the page numbers when viewing latest posting first are different than for people viewing the normal first posting first. Since the links still work for me without the page number, I thought what I was doing would make the permalinks actual permalinks. The issue would also occur if some postings were merged in or deleted - the page number part of the link would then be incorrect for everyone.

    The original link would have been (note that I have tried to break the link so you can see what it says)
    h ttp://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/feedback-on-new-forum-software.87379/page-7#post-351358
    I modified my link to be
    h ttp://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/feedback-on-new-forum-software.87379/#post-351358

    I'm going to see if I can create separate Feedback threads for these two issues.
     
  11. wcutler

    wcutler Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout 10 Years

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  12. Junglekeeper

    Junglekeeper Esteemed Contributor 10 Years

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    Yes. This thread should be deleted if its contents has been moved.
     

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