One way to do a single space is to hold down the Shift key before you hit enter:
Then you get a single space like this. It's not fancy, I know - but we are stuck with the best open sourced editor we know of - the CKeditor - you can find out more about it, and it's quirks, here: http://ckeditor.com/
Previews are a bit annoying - they do work on smaller pieces but take up too much memory at the moment for the larger ones. Hopefully we'll find a solution soon - it's something we're working on!
And Luigi - you're right about the IP page! I hadn't noticed that - will get to work on putting a button in there so we can scroll and see more.
Thanks for the info, Luke. Holding down the shift is no good if you're cutting and pasting your piece, as I always do, rather than typing it directly. And the 'preview' didn't work on any of my pieces, long or short :)
See what you mean about the editor. I always forget you use Drupal - I work with phpNuke.
That's odd about how your copy paste isn't working, though we've had problems with copy pasting before - it seems to be a little finicky. I seem to be able to copy and paste pieces in from Word without the double-space thing happening. One thing to try is the 'Paste from word' button at the top right of the editor for stories. Does that work?
Tiny MCE looks good - though it seems to have the same double-spacing issue as CKeditor! We'll keep trying to get something that does everything we want it too.
Thanks for bringing these things up though - it's so useful to have feedback like this!
Another query: some authors have a CONTACT box on their page. Although the contact setting box in my personal profile has been ticked, there isn't one on my page. Is this an anomaly? Are other people similarly affected?
I've always found the buttons under 'Awards' on the READ page confusing. I think I'm getting the point better now, that if you want to see the 'picks of the day' you need to also check the ''cherry-picked' button or you only get old 'picks of the day' that weren't cherry-picked at the time. And the same with 'stories of the week'. But I'm still not sure what 'Any' signifies in each catagory, and find the combination of permutations of buttons a bit confusing. Doesn't anyone else find it so, or aren't these buttons used much anyway?
Rhiannon
I don't use that particular function, Rhiannon, but I find other things confusing, for instance I posted a poem whose text came out in red and I would like to know how to apply colour but cannot find any directions on how to achieve this. Only recently I was told how the spell checker works. Perhaps we ought to have an online support. In answer to your question I too don't know what 'Any' means.
Yes, I've not thought about colour, but it would be a help to have a special section on support I think.
On my query, I've got to the point of realising I think that, if, say you want to see 'pick of the day's, you have to check 'cherry-picked' some way: if you check 'no' for cherry-picked, you get the picks of the day that weren't cherry-picked, if 'yes' you get the ones that were 'cherry-picked' and I suppose (but I haven't investigated this!) if you press any, you'll get them all! But i do find it confusing, though I think it was just a decision to investigate that started it all rather than really needing to use the function!
I know that the awards search icon is peculiar - we'll give it a think and try to figure out how best to simplify. Maybe the best thing would be to have a simpler thing, so that you could only search for one award at a time. Realistically, you're probably not going to be searching for stories of the week that have only been cherrypicked, or not cherrypicked for that matter. We're working out the kinks a little at a time!
As for colour, Luigi, I don't think the editor has an inbuilt colour feature - which is a shame. I know that you can achieve it via html, but that leads to a lot of finicky coding that might be complicated to learn. Happy to share what little I know, if you'd like to hear it! The only reason for your piece coming out red that I can think of is if you accidentally hit the hyperlink button - the little chain with a green plus - as all our links are automatically coloured red.
Come to think of it, having some colour to play with could come in handy from time to time. Did you know that in Faulkner's original draft of The Sound and The Fury - all of the different periods that are piled one on top of the other were distinguished by different coloured fonts? It would have made the book a lot easier to understand - but the publishers decided it'd be too odd - and expensive! - to publish a book like that!
Luke, just a thought that as online support is probably very labour intensive, maybe collecting up gradually some of the frequently asked questions and answers on technical basics and adding to them from time to time, in a FAQ section might be worthwhile if it could be managed. Rhiannon
Rhiannon, I think your idea of a FAQ is a good one; we could see what it is that we find difficult to understand.
Luke, if you could make the preview button functional we would be able to experiment with styles and colours (given some knowledge of html of course) before saving a piece rather having to edit it if the outcome is not desired one.
Actually, Luigi, what I have been doing is saving my pieces 'unpublished' and then when I edit, the preview works and I can tinker if I want to before saving 'published'. Rhiannon
If anyone has any questions or issues that should be covered in the FAQ, let me know! It is now available via the footer to every page, under 'About Us'.
Looks good, and there will probably be plenty of suggestions forthcoming. May be an idea to flag it up in a current forum/blog/home page as a new additional 'service'?
The problem of double spacing is solved - sort of - Shift & Return as several posters have indicated.
But then when I Save the finished poetry all the verse formatting disappears and it saves as one mass of unformatted sentences.
Have I missed something ?
Advice appreciated. mayman
I haven't had that problem, but in this case maybe there's some kind of residual formatting that occurs? Have you tried copying and pasting out into a word or text document, and then back into the editor after saving? Let me have a fiddle around with one of your poems and see if we can't get it right.
You've formatted Wannabe pretty much how I did before saving it lost all the verses.
I guess it's got to be incompatibilty between my old system and your new one.
I'm going to have to try another solution.
Mayman.
NB. For info: I am using: AOL 9. Windows XP. Internet Explorer 9
EDIT: Yet it's kept the formatting on this post ! Puzzling.
If you still have problems, following an update, I would recommend trying Firefox or Chrome, which are both tend to work slightly better with ABCtales:
Thanks Luke.
I think you are correct about my browser.
But Windows wont allow XP users to upgrade Internet Explorer any further that IE9.
XP users have to upgrade to Windows 7 first and to do that we are advised to remove everything from the computer before upgrading otherwise the upgrade wipes everything clean !
So it can be complicated & expensive.
Luckily for me I have a new laptop so - I will work on that from now on. (Much prefer my old desktop though.)
But for others reading this with the same problems, their options would seem to be a full system upgrade or - as you say - a new browser like Chrome, Firefox, etc.
Thanks again. mayman
EDIT: It is curious that the formatting stays as it is set in these Forum posts but not in the editing & saving of our (my) actual work. Different software ?
The editors for writing and for comments are configured differently - which should result in giving you more options and control for your work, but unfortunately sometimes result in situations like this.
I didn't realise XP wouldn't allow you to upgrade - that's a shame! I can heartily recommend both Firefox and Chrome - I've used both, they are free and quite reliable.
Hi andrea,
Which browser are you using? I don't have any problem using Chrome, Firefox, IE9-11 and Safari.
1. Spellcheck doesn't work while you are typing; it will if you click on the icon but only on what's been typed up to that point.
3. I too get a blank page when submitting 'preview' before saving the text but it shows after I saved a piece.
My browser is Firefox.
Other peculiarities I have come across:
If I click on Inspiration point (IP) I only get one page. To see more I have to click on Inspiration Point in the 'genre'.
Great feedback - in my profile it says I have 4 of these but looking at those listed under 'Read' I can't see mine.
If I edit a piece it reverts to 'Not read yet' even when the change is minimal, e.g. a change of category.
No doubt more niggles will come to light but can't think of any other at the moment.
Hi luigi,
1. To use the spellcheck when you write you need to activate the "SCAYT". You'll find it clicking on the "ABC" button.
2. The preview functionality doesn't work if the page is not saved. I know it is a bit odd, but it will remain like this for now.
3. Are you sure you are on the right page? Inspiration Point has this url: (http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip) which is on the Read menu.
4. The Greed Feedback only shows comments of the current month, otherwise it'll be an infinite list.
5. When you modify a story it becomes "unread" again, so editor would need to check your changes and "mark as read" again.
Hope that helps,
Admin.
Inspiration point - there seems to be two points of reference:
(http://www.abctales.com/genre/inspiration-point-0) that has a variable number of pages
and (http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip) which only has one fixed page.
Oh, by the way, this post CAN be previewed prior to saving.
I'm using Chrome, admin.
http://www.ukauthors.com
http://www.ukapress.com
Hi Andrea,
One way to do a single space is to hold down the Shift key before you hit enter:
Then you get a single space like this. It's not fancy, I know - but we are stuck with the best open sourced editor we know of - the CKeditor - you can find out more about it, and it's quirks, here: http://ckeditor.com/
Previews are a bit annoying - they do work on smaller pieces but take up too much memory at the moment for the larger ones. Hopefully we'll find a solution soon - it's something we're working on!
And Luigi - you're right about the IP page! I hadn't noticed that - will get to work on putting a button in there so we can scroll and see more.
Hope that helps,
Luke
Hey Luigi,
The pager for the IP page has now been added: http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip !
Thanks for that, Luke. Well done.
Thanks for the info, Luke. Holding down the shift is no good if you're cutting and pasting your piece, as I always do, rather than typing it directly. And the 'preview' didn't work on any of my pieces, long or short :)
See what you mean about the editor. I always forget you use Drupal - I work with phpNuke.
Have you looked into this one? --> http://www.tinymce.com/
Not to worry, minor points :)
http://www.ukauthors.com
http://www.ukapress.com
Previews work on comments only at the moment.
That's odd about how your copy paste isn't working, though we've had problems with copy pasting before - it seems to be a little finicky. I seem to be able to copy and paste pieces in from Word without the double-space thing happening. One thing to try is the 'Paste from word' button at the top right of the editor for stories. Does that work?
Tiny MCE looks good - though it seems to have the same double-spacing issue as CKeditor! We'll keep trying to get something that does everything we want it too.
Thanks for bringing these things up though - it's so useful to have feedback like this!
Another query: some authors have a CONTACT box on their page. Although the contact setting box in my personal profile has been ticked, there isn't one on my page. Is this an anomaly? Are other people similarly affected?
Hi luigi,
Yes, you have a contact form but it is only visible to other users.
I've always found the buttons under 'Awards' on the READ page confusing. I think I'm getting the point better now, that if you want to see the 'picks of the day' you need to also check the ''cherry-picked' button or you only get old 'picks of the day' that weren't cherry-picked at the time. And the same with 'stories of the week'. But I'm still not sure what 'Any' signifies in each catagory, and find the combination of permutations of buttons a bit confusing. Doesn't anyone else find it so, or aren't these buttons used much anyway?
Rhiannon
I don't use that particular function, Rhiannon, but I find other things confusing, for instance I posted a poem whose text came out in red and I would like to know how to apply colour but cannot find any directions on how to achieve this. Only recently I was told how the spell checker works. Perhaps we ought to have an online support. In answer to your question I too don't know what 'Any' means.
Luigi
Yes, I've not thought about colour, but it would be a help to have a special section on support I think.
On my query, I've got to the point of realising I think that, if, say you want to see 'pick of the day's, you have to check 'cherry-picked' some way: if you check 'no' for cherry-picked, you get the picks of the day that weren't cherry-picked, if 'yes' you get the ones that were 'cherry-picked' and I suppose (but I haven't investigated this!) if you press any, you'll get them all! But i do find it confusing, though I think it was just a decision to investigate that started it all rather than really needing to use the function!
Rh
Hi Rhiannon,
I know that the awards search icon is peculiar - we'll give it a think and try to figure out how best to simplify. Maybe the best thing would be to have a simpler thing, so that you could only search for one award at a time. Realistically, you're probably not going to be searching for stories of the week that have only been cherrypicked, or not cherrypicked for that matter. We're working out the kinks a little at a time!
As for colour, Luigi, I don't think the editor has an inbuilt colour feature - which is a shame. I know that you can achieve it via html, but that leads to a lot of finicky coding that might be complicated to learn. Happy to share what little I know, if you'd like to hear it! The only reason for your piece coming out red that I can think of is if you accidentally hit the hyperlink button - the little chain with a green plus - as all our links are automatically coloured red.
Come to think of it, having some colour to play with could come in handy from time to time. Did you know that in Faulkner's original draft of The Sound and The Fury - all of the different periods that are piled one on top of the other were distinguished by different coloured fonts? It would have made the book a lot easier to understand - but the publishers decided it'd be too odd - and expensive! - to publish a book like that!
Luke
Luke, just a thought that as online support is probably very labour intensive, maybe collecting up gradually some of the frequently asked questions and answers on technical basics and adding to them from time to time, in a FAQ section might be worthwhile if it could be managed. Rhiannon
Rhiannon, I think your idea of a FAQ is a good one; we could see what it is that we find difficult to understand.
Luke, if you could make the preview button functional we would be able to experiment with styles and colours (given some knowledge of html of course) before saving a piece rather having to edit it if the outcome is not desired one.
Actually, Luigi, what I have been doing is saving my pieces 'unpublished' and then when I edit, the preview works and I can tinker if I want to before saving 'published'. Rhiannon
That's useful to know, Rhiannon, it is the kind of information we need; thanks for that. Eventually all the misteries will unravel.
Luigi
I didn't even know that was possible! It's great news, in a way - at least it brings us closer to functionatity.
I think an FAQ is an excellent idea. I'm on it.
Slightly delayed in fixing this up, but here's a first draft: http://www.abctales.com/abctales-faq
If anyone has any questions or issues that should be covered in the FAQ, let me know! It is now available via the footer to every page, under 'About Us'.
Looks good, and there will probably be plenty of suggestions forthcoming. May be an idea to flag it up in a current forum/blog/home page as a new additional 'service'?
The problem of double spacing is solved - sort of - Shift & Return as several posters have indicated.
But then when I Save the finished poetry all the verse formatting disappears and it saves as one mass of unformatted sentences.
Have I missed something ?
Advice appreciated. mayman
Hi Mayman,
I haven't had that problem, but in this case maybe there's some kind of residual formatting that occurs? Have you tried copying and pasting out into a word or text document, and then back into the editor after saving? Let me have a fiddle around with one of your poems and see if we can't get it right.
Thanks Luke.
You've formatted Wannabe pretty much how I did before saving it lost all the verses.
I guess it's got to be incompatibilty between my old system and your new one.
I'm going to have to try another solution.
Mayman.
NB. For info: I am using: AOL 9. Windows XP. Internet Explorer 9
EDIT: Yet it's kept the formatting on this post ! Puzzling.
Hi Mayman,
Glad it's working for you - even if only sporadically!
I think the problem is your browser. The editor we're using is geared to the latest version of Internet Explorer - 11 - which you should be able to download here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-explorer/ie-11-worldwide-languages.
If you still have problems, following an update, I would recommend trying Firefox or Chrome, which are both tend to work slightly better with ABCtales:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/
http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/chrome/browser/
Let me know how it goes!
Thanks Luke.
I think you are correct about my browser.
But Windows wont allow XP users to upgrade Internet Explorer any further that IE9.
XP users have to upgrade to Windows 7 first and to do that we are advised to remove everything from the computer before upgrading otherwise the upgrade wipes everything clean !
So it can be complicated & expensive.
Luckily for me I have a new laptop so - I will work on that from now on. (Much prefer my old desktop though.)
But for others reading this with the same problems, their options would seem to be a full system upgrade or - as you say - a new browser like Chrome, Firefox, etc.
Thanks again. mayman
EDIT: It is curious that the formatting stays as it is set in these Forum posts but not in the editing & saving of our (my) actual work. Different software ?
The editors for writing and for comments are configured differently - which should result in giving you more options and control for your work, but unfortunately sometimes result in situations like this.
I didn't realise XP wouldn't allow you to upgrade - that's a shame! I can heartily recommend both Firefox and Chrome - I've used both, they are free and quite reliable.
Glad to hear things are starting to work!