Serious lack of functionality: Paragraphing/formatting on new version of forum

[danielcwsmith]

Edit to add 1) Artificial text breaks as (XXX) - I have been trying on behalf of another user who wants to post a for sale ad, to introduce a paragraph into text. I cannot for the life of me do it. The writing pane you input content in shows the layout, then the forum post rejigs it into one block of text. See here for an example of the issue: https://www.lotus7.club/forum/sale/mini-cooper-s-jcw-r53-sale-fantastic-condition-and-spec XXX

 

In addition, there seems to be no function for any sort of formatting. XXX

 

This needs addressing fairly urgently I would suggest, and frankly, is an unforgivable "bug" on a roll out. This is essential functionality that's missing. The UX and testers who signed this off need a word. If it was outsourced, you need money back.

[danielcwsmith]

I notice that the lack of paragraphing and formatting is limited to the opening or "new" post that opens a topic.

Once replying, all the formatting and image adding becomes available. I suspect the link above will change, so the image is below:

While we're at it on the formatting opening posts issues, the lack of image addition on the new topic first post is also missing, and still a shambles when you do come to add images. I cannot for the life of me understand why a "new" forum cannot do what other forums (fora?) have been doing for over a decade.

Finally, I notice the hyperlink I posted in my first post also isn't a hyperlink. Of course, there's no formatting for that either, but I would also expect a hyperlink to be automatically activated in a forum post, not require special formatting. Again, a feature that has been standard for a very long time elsewhere.

Apologies for the negativity, but these are the basics. I don't care about a flag if I can't use a forum in the most basic way. I feel like my membership money is literally being wasted on this.

[John Vine]

I have to agree with the above.  I've just created this ChitChat post, and encountered several problems:

• No formatting options were available (bold, italic etc)
• Nothing happened when I clicked on "Text Format Options"
• I had no way to insert a hyperlink

And when I viewed the post itself, my separate paragraphs had been ignored and the text was all rolled into one paragraph.  And when I tried to edit the post, Catch-22 came into play, and there were no formatting options!

These requirements are pretty basic for a forum post, so please fix!

(ETA: Win 8.1 Dell PC with Firefox 56.0.2)

JV
 

[Comp Sec]

Just noticed something.

At the bottom of the reply box, you have the option to enable or disable rich text.

I suspect that for some reason its disabled rather than enabled.

when enable you should see all the normal formatting.

[John Vine]

Yes, I think you're on to something there.  It seems that, when creating or editing a new topic, the enable/disable toggle is set to "disabled" AND hidden.

JV