In response to member requests, we’re very happy to announce a new feature on the Commons: HTML editing buttons now appear throughout the site on text boxes. You’ll find these boxes on group discussion forums, member profile wires, and blog comment boxes. Please see the image below for an example.
Due to security concerns, we’re allowing a limited number of HTML tags, but we hope that we’ve useful tags: bold, italics, bulleted list, numbered list, indented paragraph, and link.
One note: because our forum email notification system sends out alert emails in plain text, formatting on forums will not appear in the notification messages that get sent out to subscribers. Therefore, if your message includes an important link that you want subscribers to see via email, you might want to include the URL somewhere in the message, since embedded links will be seen only by members who view the message on the Commons website.
If you have any questions about this, please let us know. And thanks to Commons Lead Developer Boone B. Gorges for his work on this.
Update (2/6/10): The HTML quicktag editor wound up causing all sorts of problems, so we have temporarily removed it from the site until we can find a better solution. HTML code can still be entered by hand into forum and wire text boxes, but we hope to re-enable quick tags in the future. If you have thoughts on this subject, please let us know in the comments.
THANK YOU! You all are amazing. Every time I come back to this site, it has a dozen new features, all of which improveby making it eaier and more fun to use both for newbies and experienced social networkers.
Thanks so much, Karen. We’re trying! The most exciting thing about the platform we’ve chosen is that it allow us to add features that will be of use to members of the site . . . . so if you have suggestions for us, please use the “Feedback” tab on the home page of the site!