[MaxImageSize addon] How do you embed an image to begin with?

Raize · September 2010

This discussion is related to the MaxImageSize addon.

html?

atmey · September 2010

Seems so


< img src="http://www.vanillaforums.org/themes/vforg/design/images/sprites.png&quot; />

kelepon · September 2010

test

< img src="http://www.vanillaforums.org/themes/vforg/design/images/sprites.png" />

Mikhael · September 2010

There are other posts about embedding images, but what most users need is the ability to paste a link and have the image/video display. What Admins need is some control over the end results so pages don't end up a complete mess, ie., the MaxImageSize plugin.

A very useful addition to Vanilla 2 in this respect would be an input filter plugin (as Drupal has) so that allowed input can be set by User Role. Eg., Member; plain text only with {b}, {i}, {a}, and Admin; full html.

Desmanthus · September 2010

How is @Atmey doing that above? Displaying the images I mean. Why didn't it work for @kelepon ?

Tim · September 2010

@kelepon has a space between the initial '<' and the tagname 'img'. If you write a properly formatted tag, you'll get the desired results.

Tim · September 2010

Looks like he just copied @Atmey's example, which was 'broken' on purpose to force the text of the code to appear, instead of being rendered as HTML.

Mikhael · September 2010

I suspect discussions around embedding and attaching will grow, and it'd help if we can all search and pull threads together for each other to follow.

The key point about it all, I think, is that those of us who are used to forums and posting don't find inserting a bit of html difficult, while a huge number of site users don't have a clue (and shouldn't need to). They want to just insert a link - complicated enough for them - and see the image or video 'inserted' as they wish.

I find basic embedding works ok. Fine as it is for what I want so far.

Lykaon · September 2010

@Mikhael: I agree that his is problem in general is somewhat large if Vanilla is to be accepted by general users (rather than geeks like us). I run a fansite for a hot actress -- not always the most tech savvy people.

So far (as you know), I haven't gotten a single one of the WYSIWYG editors to fully function on Vanilla 2 in all browsers. Even in Vanilla 1, it was always a pain to get those to work. I know WYSIWYG editing is tangential to this discussion, but I think it's the same general problem of making the forums accessible.

I don't understand how that was overlooked in Vanilla 2 when it was (in my opinion) one of the major drawbacks of Vanilla 1. Modern forum software should have a WYSIWYG editor at the very least. Not having it is a major barrier of entry for your basic forum users.

atmey · September 2010

No, I hate WYSIWYG editors, I think when you past or write a url, vanilla should autodetect it if it is an image and give a small pop up next to the url if you want to embed it in img tags.

Raize · September 2010

I don't really like WYSIWYG editors, but it would be awesome if you could simply paste a link to the image and it would auto-resize and auto-embed.

So far, Vanilla has taken a lot of design and functionality cues from Twitter but I think the team should learn a lot from Tumblr too (it's the fastest growing social network right now next to Facebook).

Food for thought @Tim :)

atmey · September 2010

Tumblr is a social network? I thought it was a blog/image host.

Raize · September 2010

One one level it's a blog/image host, but the fact that you can "follow" other blogs and they can follow you gives it a big social network component. It seems that Vanilla is taking this approach as well, with the release of @Tim 's latest plugin: http://vanillaforums.org/addon/618/following

It would be a lot more interesting if different Vanilla forums could connect to each other somehow... the days of massively large "general topic" forums are gone... the next wave of forums will be very niche based so being able to connect amongst them (like tumblr) will be key.