People are still getting used to this forum, so I thought I would create a topic where people could post tips on how to do things and share any cool “hidden” features they find.
So I’ll start:
If you want to quote someone’s text, just hightlight the text on the topic(as if you were going to use ctrl+c) and click on the button that pops up.
Be careful, the capital i and regular L are exactly alike. → IlIlIl (reversed it would look like iLiLiL).
Think before you post. If you say something you didn’t want to, people can still see the old version of your post even after you edit it by clicking on the red pencil icon.
Click on the icon between the avatar and the magnifying glass on top of the screen and select “Mobile view”. That way you get to fill the entire screen with text(I prefer desktop view though).
On the right of the post you can see a “+” to create a topic quoting the post, a <- showing the last post that have links to it or a -> showing the last post linked by it. (example)
If you try to write <- and -> without using the “code sample </>” highlight, everything between those 2 arrows won’t show up for some reason(I just learned that the hard way).
On big topics like this, you can switch view to a “best of” mode with a button under the first post, which results in only the posts with the most likes and replies being shown.
When you quote a portion of a post using the first tip on this post, the resulting quote can be altered. Like on the quote above, if you click on “Expand/collapse”(top right of the quote), you can either see the partial quoted/edited text, or the full post. You can also click on the upward arrow to go directly to the original’s post location.
With the reply editing tab open, you can keep browsing discourse at will, even reading different topics while writing. If you press “reply” while looking at a different topic, a pop up will ask if you want to reply to the original topic(the one where you clicked reply), or the one you are looking at. Doing it this way will post as a general reply on the topic though, so if you clicked to reply directly to a post, you should probably stick to that topic while writing.(haven’t fully tested this yet).
List of emoticons can be found here. But here are a few simplified ones:
You can also use :stars: or a bunch of other icons. Just press : and a letter. There are over 100 icons. Here is a list.
Using colors and sizes: green - Red - I am in <font color=green>green</font> - <font color=red size=5>Red</font> - <font color=blue size=1>I am in</font>
Tip from @daiceman: Popular websites such as Wikipedia will display a preview of their content. Make sure to leave some space and just write the link normally. Example:
I’m not sure why it’s not showing the incoming link to this thread from your post in the General Forum Testing thread.
Let’s see if the above link shows up as incoming on your post in that thread.
Edit: Hmm. If you follow that link to your post in the General Forum Testing thread, you’ll see that there is both an arrow to the right showing the outgoing link, and an arrow to the left showing the incoming link from this post.
I wonder why the incoming link is not shown on your OP of this thread.
Posts can definitely have multiple incoming and outgoing arrows. I’ve seen it over at meta.discourse.org
Another feature tip:
If you paste a link to a specific post, that post will be inserted as a quote.
(To get the link to a specific post, click the chain-link icon at the bottom of that post)
If you ‘ninja edit’ your post within the ninja edit time window (default 5 minutes), then no one can see what you originally wrote and the orange edit history icon does not appear.
That is because I edited your post trying to add the quote dots, which were missing when I just selected the text and clicked quote. When you expand, it shows the full unaltered post.
I don’t know why it decided to use “-” instead of the dots though. Ill add that as another tip now.
What is weirder is how now my first post on this topic is now a reply to one of your later posts on this very topic.
edit: As on the reason why not all links appear on the right of my first post, I now suspect it might have something to do with the fact that the link was edited in. I think the link only shows up if you create the post with it there. Or maybe it should show up, but that is why it bugged and didnt.
Its actually a link from a different post on that same topic, which I added when the post was created, instead of the earlier one, which I added when the post was edited.
You are also correct that my test above wasn’t valid since I linked to the same topic, but I still think it has something to do with linking while editing.
I have found that I was wrong about the edit icon thing that you quoted me on in the OP.
The edit icon didn’t show up because I edited my post within the ninja-edit window which by default is 5 minutes.
Is there any way to not go to first unread post when clicking on topic subject? Alternatively is there a button like the old goto-first-unread button, to open thread on OP? As weird as that might sound… I don’t like the computer deciding for me what to read… The old manual choice “G-F-U” button method was more natural.
You can click the 16 of 16 button to the right to jump up to the OP.
Weirdly, when accessing a topic from the topic list, if you click the # where it says how many likes there are in the topic, that will take you to the OP instead of your first unread post.
Hmph… If I’m clicking on that green jump-to-top/bottom X/Y button, I’m having to do as many manual operations as I used to have to, and so this fancy new improvement on forum design is not such an improvement.
/grumpy old cactus mode
where it says how many likes there are in the topic, that will take you to the OP instead of your first unread post.