Titan Network

Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: PhiloticKnight on May 06, 2019, 04:01:43 PM

Title: CoH: Homecoming BBCoder - New Tool!
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 06, 2019, 04:01:43 PM
I'm sort of cross-posting this here from the CoH: Homecoming forums (which I won't link to here, since I don't know what this forum's policy is, but I have to assume that it doesn't allow links to "competitors"), but I noticed that this forum is also an SMF forum, just like the Homecoming forum. Well, I ran into frustrations with that forum's editor, and since I'm a heavier forum user than I'm even a player, I decided to "fix" the problem for myself by making my own application. So, here it is...

CoH: Homecoming BBCoder!

The tool offers the following BBCodes (shown in this "invisible" bbcode table, not all tags useable on all forums):

Left Align
Center Align
Right Align


Pre                      formatted                           text
just     in      case    you     want    to    be                  explicit


Bold   Italics   Underline
Strikethru   Font Size   Font Color
Glow   Shadow   
Marquee
Image: (https://score.savecoh.com/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=45;type=avatar) Link (https://www.cohtitan.com)   
Code: [Select]
Code
Quote from: The Philotic Knight
This is a quote, I like to quote myself extensively!
   SuperScript   SubScript
Teletype   Horizontal Rule
   

Table,Table Row, and Table Header




Plus, a special "Table Wizard" that will automatically create a table for you, using Tabs as column indicators and newlines/returns as row indicators - just highlight the  text that you want to be Tablefied!

The first button on the main toolstrip is just a Clear button and the last two are for a Preview window, and to copy all of the text from the main textbox to your clipboard. You can see the Preview button right next to the main program in action in the screenshot above.

Let me know if you see any bugs that I haven't already described above, or any additional features that you'd like. This is of course just an initial alpha version.

DOWNLOAD LINK (https://www.dropbox.com/s/x13ltgthiz1zqoa/CoH%20Homecoming%20BBCoder.zip?dl=0)

By the way, if you couldn't tell already, this post was of course made with the BBCoder. :p

FREEM!!!



I've decided that it was worth it after all to continue this app as a hobby and exercise for myself, so I have. I've updated the program to now handle ALL of the bbCodes that you can see on the current website editor. I've also moved away from using Visual Studio's TERRIBLE "WebBrowser" object, due to known issues with it displaying webpages in "compatibility mode" and breaking CSS. (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25098375/winform-webbrowser-not-displaying-css) I've left the old PreviewForm inside the solution itself in case I want to re-implement sometime in the future, but for now, I'm "cheating" and just opening up your default browser to "preview" the bbCode.

That being said, why should you use this program rather than just using the editor that's built into the browser? Well, the regular editor is fine for day-to-day users, but heavy users that would like more options and greater versatility should consider this tool. My BBCoder has the following options that the built-in web editor does NOT have:

Auto-restriction of input window to forum post limit of x number of characters - don't you hate it when you type out a HUGE monologue about how AWESOME City of Heroes is, and how you'd like to hump it forever, and when you go to hit the "Send" button, the forum tells you it's too long? Well, you won't have that problem if you use the BBCoder, because you WON'T be able to type any text beyond the post limit! The default of 20,000 characters is the CoH: Homecoming forum length limit. You should adjust this number to whatever value your forum has as its limit. This setting will save in the program on exit.

Auto-restriction of line length to a limit of x number of characters - Some forums can be buggy when you start typing past a certain number of characters in a line. Sometimes, you just want your text to be formatted in a certain way and only have a certain number of characters per line. This tool offers you a solution to both issues. Set to "0" by default (which makes the line length infinite), this setting forces the editor to automatically insert a NewLine after "X" number of characters.

Auto-Lists - This tool gives you the ability to create "auto-lists" in one of two ways.
If you have already typed a bunch of items typed out on individual lines, you can just highlight those lines and hit EITHER of the "List" buttons in the program (either ordered or un-ordered), and your text will be "magically" wrapped in a list, like so:
Code: [Select]
Peanuts
Toffee
Cookies
Cake
Pie

Or, if you just click the button with nothing highlighted, you'll be given a series of prompts that ask you for the list items, one after another. If you enter either no text, or hit the cancel button, it ends the list.

Auto-Tables/Table Wizard - The same way that you can automatically create lists with the BBCoder, you can also automatically create TABLES! Just make your table by using tabs between columns, and newlines between rows, like so:
Code: [Select]
this is a really
really cool table that
I hope
you can
read.
Again, highlight all of the text, click the TableWizard button, and PRESTO! Instant table!
thisisareally
reallycooltablethat
Ihope
youcan
read.

ANY color you can imagine for Text, Shadow, and Glow effects - Right now, the built in editor only lets you choose from 15 predefined colors for font text, and Glow and Shadow effects have no color selector at all. Sure, you can research bbCode and hex color codes and figure it out for yourself, but why do that, when you can make use of Microsoft's color picker to create any color you can imagine in your post?
(https://i.imgur.com/34hcw9m.png)
The BBCoder lets you use that color dialogue for Text Color, Shadow, AND Glow color!

Smilies! Anyone that used the CoH boards should remember Mr. Yellow, the smiley that could! Well, I've built in automatic links to Mr. Yellow into the program, so that you can add any version of him right into your posts anywhere with ease! (https://i.imgur.com/xWcL56W.gif) I'm also considering in a future version a toolbar that lets you create your own "macros" built into the program that allows you to insert your own images into posts with ease from a pre-defined list, but that's coming Soontm.

If you don't care about any of that... eh... just use the built in editor, and you'll be just fine.

And because I'm all about transparency:
Source code here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/cmzfj71nu4tzjb6/Homecoming%20BBCoder%20Source%20Code.zip?dl=0)

Version without an installer here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/27e98c3x5sa9zls/CoH%20Homecoming%20BBCoder%20Portable.zip?dl=0)
Title: Re: CoH: Homecoming BBCoder - New Tool!
Post by: Tahquitz on May 17, 2019, 11:55:44 PM
As seen above, certain effects like Glow, Shadow and Marquee have been disabled at Titan Network, so as long as folks realize that, go for it. 

(Not all forums are going to allow all BBCode markup.  Here, I agree with Admin's decision that the marquee tag needs to die in a fire, regardless of the form it tries to take.)

Carry on. :D
Title: Re: CoH: Homecoming BBCoder - New Tool!
Post by: PhiloticKnight on May 18, 2019, 12:08:10 AM
Awww... but Marquee is so FUN! So strong and pretty!