Losing post text when previewing

BirdingNZ.net problems, tips, feature suggestions etc.
User avatar
Neil Fitzgerald
Site Admin
Posts: 3637
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Hamilton, New Zealand
Contact:

Losing post text when previewing

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:01 pm

Picture this—you've just spent two hours crafting a brilliant post, you preview it and notice a minor typo so hit the backspace key to delete it. Your heart then sinks as the page reloads and you are looking at an empty text box! It's gone, and it's not nice.
If this has happened to you,
  1. you are probably using Internet Exploder Explorer and
  2. you just discovered one of its interesting bugs features
It seems that the web browser makers decided it would be a good idea to make the [backspace] key double as a go-back-to-the-previous-page button. That's right, the same backspace key that we all use to delete text when we make a typing boo-boo. I don't know why we need another keyboard shortcut to achieve this. I've always found [Alt] in conjunction with the left or right arrows satisfactory when I want to go backward or forward respectively and can't muster the strength to use the mouse. "But it doesn't always do it!" you say. Yes, that's right. If the focus is on a form text box, like when you are typing a post, it behaves how we expect, it deletes text. But accidentally click anywhere else on the page first and you could be in trouble.

What to do about it? Well, it turns out that it isn't only IE that does this. Firefox and Safari do almost the same thing, but with an important difference, they keep the text you had entered into the form/textbox on the page you just left. At least that is how they behave on my system (Win XP). Additionally, Firefox allows you to change or disable this behavior.
  • type "about:config" into the address bar
  • read the warning and agree to be careful
  • find the preference for "browser.backspace_action", right click on it and choose "Modify" and change the value
    • 0: Pressing [Backspace] will go back a page in the session history and [Shift]+[Backspace] will go forward
    • 1: Pressing [Backspace] will scroll up a page in the current document and [Shift]+[Backspace] will scroll down
    • Any other integer number: Any other integer value will simply unmap the backspace key. I use 2
Done. You can navigate to another page or close Firefox and you won't have this problem again.

If you still feel like sticking with Internet Explorer, and you find yourself looking at a heartbreakingly empty text box, try clicking on the "Forward" button at the top of the page or [Shift]+[Backspace]. You may get a warning that the web page has expired, but click the refresh button (or press [F5]) and then "Resend" on the pop up message, and if you are lucky you might find your message is restored.
Whew! I hope that helps.
User avatar
Neil Fitzgerald
Site Admin
Posts: 3637
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Hamilton, New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Losing post text when previewing

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:11 pm

Another thing to consider, and something I try to remember to do more myself, is to type big or important posts in another application, like Word, and copy and paste to web forms when it is ready.
Rewi

Re: Losing post text when previewing

Postby Rewi » Tue Jan 26, 2010 4:48 am

Yes, that's exactly what happened to me! Very shrewd of you to pick up exactly the problem, Neil.
I agree with you, and have now started doing the posts in 'Word' first, then pasting them across.
That works well on here (unlike on the old Yahoo Group, where it inserts all the otherwise invisible
keyboard macros and looks terrible!) so I'll be trying to get into better habits.
Much appreciated - great to have a Webmaster who's so in tune to the needs of the users - even when
it's their own fault, like me!
Rewi

Return to “BirdingNZ.net Help”