Additional option to preview with cuts

[velocitygrass]

Title:
Additional option to preview with cuts

Area:
posting, cut tag

Summary:
In addition to the normal preview there should be an option to allow previewing the entry with cut tags, i.e. as it would be displayed on a reading page.

Description:
Right now the only way to see how your entry will look like with the cut tags is to actually post and then check.

This means if you messed up a cut tag, your epic fic, huge picspam, NSFW drawing, or mega-spoiler will appear uncut on your friends' reading page for as long as it takes you to fix it.

It also means that you have to very carefully check a post with several tags if you like them to look orderly or post first and edit to fix the cut tags later.

Possible implementations:
1) An additional button "Preview with cuts"
2) A checkbox "preview with cuts" which would then change how the preview button displays the preview (preferred because it could link to help page about cuts)

I believe such a preview would make it much more convenient to handle cut tags and avoid feelings of panic and unnecessary checking and re-checking if a cut tag works as intended before posting.

Possible drawbacks:
When searching the suggestions community (I was very surprised that nobody suggested this before), I found one post (http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/161146.html) that says that "many users new to this corner of the internets don't know what a cut is". So adding such an option might be confusing. However, if option 2) is taken, it could link to the fitting help page, so that people could find out what a cut is in case they don't know.

Poll #1812 Additional option to preview with cuts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
39 (86.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (6.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
3 (6.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[melannen]

Another option would be to do it like some of the clients do, and have the default preview show the cuts - you have to click on the cuts (in preview) to see the whole entry. This would remove the need for two different previews, but it might be confusing to new users.

Anyway, yes, we need preview with cuts! That's been on my top ten list for ages.

[velocitygrass]

Personally, I don't always want to check the cut (I have a little script in my editor that does the tag, so I mostly worry in posts with several tags or when it's done manually) and in those cases it would mean an unnecessary extra click that I wouldn't want to impose on all users.

That's been on my top ten list for ages.
I could have sworn I read about this before. That's why I was so surprised when I looked here and bugzilla and couldn't find it.

[cheyinka]

I'd prefer to see "click this button to preview in a way that's not usual for LJ/IJ/DJ/whateverJ" than "check this tickybox to preview with the cuts" (hence, I voted "with changes") - I don't see why there can't be a link to help next to it. It's not a particularly strong preference, though, either would work and would be very nice to have.

I do definitely not want the default to be with the cuts, or the tickybox to start out checked by default.

[velocitygrass]

You're right, a help link could be next to it. I actually don't really care how this is made possible as long as it's easy to use. So the button alternative would be perfectly all right with me.

And I agree that I wouldn't want the preview to be with cuts by default. It would mean an unnecessary extra click if you only want to check the post and not the cut.

[eruthros]

Yes, please! I don't care how it's implemented, I just want to be able to check my multi-cut-tagged posts before posting.

[beet]

+1 This is exactly how I feel.

[noxie]

+1

[turlough]

Hear, hear!!

[msilverstar]

Any way to inform people about what they're going to do is good with me!

I have my journal set to always post private, then I check the journal and cut and edit and cross-post.

[cesy]

But that means that people who've subscribed to notifications whenever you post will never get those notifications.

[triadruid]

"Preview with cuts" is clunky to me, as I may not have any cuts at all - perhaps what I want to see if if that image I just linked in is going to push off the right edge of my Recent Entries/Reading page. I can't come up with another wording right now, but I agree with the idea behind this suggestion.

[florahart]

For the record, IME, if you screw UP a cut, the preview is screwed up one way or another--it shows, you know, code that ought not to be there, or more often, what is there is [<cut text="blah"] and then a screwed up > or something, in which case the text of the post starts somewhere that you had a > for another reason. What doesn't show is if you forget to put in a cut entirely.

What I would personally prefer, rather than actually having to click on the cut tag in the preview, would be if it looked like, oh:

Bunch of text here that's outside the cut on purpose, text text text lalala...

(cut begins here; text: "text of the cut tag")

bunch more text that is behind the cut and all my enormous pictures and so on

and so on

and so on

with all the spoilers and whatever

text text text...

(end of cut material)

More text I intended to be outside the cut and here I can see that it is so because it is after the end of the cut tag indication.

so I could see where the cut starts and ends, but not have to actually click to see. I suppose folks might want to see without that interruption for layout reasons, but I think in general my imagination suffices for that.

[cheyinka]

That only holds if you actually do something wrong with the cut; if you do it right, but put it in the wrong place, or forget to close it, you won't see anything wrong with the preview.

[cheyinka]

That said, I'd be okay with your modification.

[velocitygrass]

I suppose folks might want to see without that interruption for layout reasons, but I think in general my imagination suffices for that.
I proposed this after posting a very long entry with several cuts inside, so for me the main reason is to be able to preview the layout.

What I would personally prefer, rather than actually having to click on the cut tag in the preview
I agree that I wouldn't want to have to click through to get to the normal preview, which is why I proposed a separate preview with cut tags. That way people can easily check the post at it will actually look and check the cut tags should they wish to.

[triadruid]

I really think that would be more confusing than the current behavior.