Vanishing Words

Roy, Yes, I've been encountering that problem for awhile. This seems to have started after the "crash" that occurred on the HelpLine last year. I can't remember which words are affected, but I tend to proofread my replies after posting them, so usually notice the deleted words. I get around this by deliberately mis-speilling the affected word (ie: "selecction"). Cheers!

Selection String Insert But I can't get any of the BB code to work.

Yes.

s-t-r-i-n-g won't work either

I use the phonetic equivalent "selektion".

i-n-s-e-r-t won't work, either.

I haven't had problems with words, probably because I have such a small vocabulary. What I do now find is that whenever I try to use the formatting, bold, italics, url, it fails to work and lumps the start together with the terminator. eh? At least I can still type...

And here I thought this was a thread asking about vanishing worlds - little known European spots that were disappearing as development increases and things get increasingly commercialized and homogenized. Like the beautiful unspoiled beach on Spain's Costa del Sol or the charming Italian hill town that's not crowded with tourists. Selection? Hmmm. Seems to be working for me (at least so far). Maybe it's browser-specific?

"Maybe it's browser-specific?" OK, lets follow that. I'm using Mozilla Firefox, and I can use the BB code but not the vanishing words. One thing I've noted, if you don't format the URL properly (like forget to the "URL=" or forget the "http;//", the URL vanishes.

Safari 5.0.3 on Mac OS 10.6.6 here. Selection, selection, selection! String, string, string! Insert, insert, insert. Insert that string in the proper selection, OK? I don't seem to have any problems with any of the BB code in isolation. However, I have seen some minor issues with nested tags - it seems the software doesn't like some combinations of nested tags (even when nested correctly). Going back in and editing I see that the software has added an extra space here and there, and in some cases actually moved the closing tag. That seems like a bug. Other issue I've found is the formatting of indented/quoted words often gets munged up, and mangles the spacing/line breaks of the items immediately before/after the quoted/indented text. Otherwise everything seems to work great! Of course, since this involved computers and code, everything has to be formatted correctly. Dare I say, "get a Mac"? :)

I'm using Firefox... Selection Insert String This should be bold http://www.ricksteves.com
Above should be a link

"....Dare I say, "get a Mac"? ".... ....or simply download Safari (ewwwww) for windows.

OK, I'll stop. :)

Well thanks for showing that its back in action. Now its up to us to show its not just Mac magic. This is Chrome under Win7. Selection, selection, selection! String, string, string! Insert, insert, insert. Insert that string in the proper selection, OK? Dare I say, "get a Mac"? NOPE.

Or maybe just... Get rid of IE? Edited: This post actually shows (what I believe is) a bug in BB code. The line above should all be bold. But when you nest a color tag within the bold tags, it displays the text in color but not in bold (at least it does on my browser). Let's see if I can override that by nesting the bold tag inside the color tag, rather than the other way around... Bold nested inside of color: Get rid of IE? Color nested inside of bold: Get rid of IE? In theory, these two lines above should appear identical. There's a bug here, I think. Italic nested inside of bold Bold nested inside of italic Italic nested inside of color Color nested inside of italic Underline nested inside of color Color nested inside of underline OK, the issue seems to be with the color tag, when combined with bold tags. The color tag can't be nested inside other tags, or else it gets overrided. If the color tag is the outermost tag, then any tags nested inside seem to work fine. At least on my system. And the system occasionally moves a closing tag (just saw it do that, had to go back and correct it later). There are definitely a few bugs in this. Hmmm. OK, I'll leave the rest to the Rick Steves QA team.

Selection Insert String
This works now, but it did not before. BTW, I tried the correction on three different Macs, each a different generation, and each using Safari.

Serious formatting question: Does this mean I must ditch my TRS-80?

No....how else are you going to play "pong?"

I wish we could go to a system that doesn't require me to know and write code. I'm too dyslexic !!! Caringbridge is a site I use (a good friend's daughter has a sight due to a horrible accident). They use what appears to be a basic Word tool bar for some simple (though limited) formatting. You can bold, use italics, change colors and highlight. You have a choice of a few fonts and a limited choice on sizes. We wouldn't even need all those choices. Oh wel... dream on.....

"Does this mean I must ditch my TRS-80?" Is that the version with the cassette drive, or did you get the new fangled upgrade of the big ol' floppy drive?

If you want hop aboard the time machine, one can download an emulator and transform your PC: http://www.trs-80emulators.com/