Have a preview feature before posting topics
 

Instead of having to edit our topics after posting, would it be possible to have a preview feature like other sites have? I find that I am constantly correcting spelling errors, grammar errors, etc. and this type of preview feature would be nice to have on FT.

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My experience is that it doesn't matter how carefully you look at it, or how many times, you never see that last error until it's in final form http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

There are other boards that let you preview your post in it's final form. You can even go to Blue Mountain and do that with your greeting cards.

Preview feature is a great idea, IMO. It would often save the later editing the we see so much on FT, myself included.

bj-21.

This sounds to me like something the FT folks could put on their UBB wish list, but given that they get the basic software from them and have limited (volunteer) time to customize it, that this is a non-trivial project, and major changes probably won't work with the next release, I don't think it's a reasonable job for them to undertake on their own.

I don't think the default UBB software has a preview option that they can turn on.

Can one of our friends at FT please comment on this idea. Does the UBB software have a preview option?

We are still waiting for a spell check feature that Randy had mentioned last year in his chats, which would help greatly in our avoiding to edit our posts.

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From the infopop website http://www.infopop.com/products/ , it would appear there are 3 basic products: Ultimate Bulletin Board (what we have), UBBThreads, and Open Topic.

I cannot find that preview post is available in the Ultimate Bulletin Board feature set descriptions. It does appear to be available in the UBBThreads - actually there seems to be some really cool technical and feature options in both UBBThreads and OpenTopic..

Here's a link to "UBBThread" features that were available in version 5.4 . Note that there is a vague reference to "preview post" as a user-toggled feature...

Preview post
The user can edit his/her profile to turn the preview post screens on or off.

http://www.infopop.com/products/ubbt.../features.html

Of course, this is just interesting conversation. They aren't giving this stuff away, nor are they sending IT staff to do conversions, maintenance, etc. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif So maybe we should remind ourselves that what we have is pretty good after all ...

I own an Alienware computer, and on their web site they have a bulletin board that have a preview feature that works in the form of a pop-up window. Their board comes from a web site run by Snitz Forums.
http://forum.snitz.com/
Perhaps our friends at FT will look into this and find a way to add a preview feature.



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UBB Threads does have that feature, but unfortunately is inadequate for FT's size.

One suggestion would just be to read your post after you type it, but before you hit submit.

If we find something that will work for us, or that can be hacked into the UBB code easily and safely, we'll try it out. We're always looking for a better system - just haven't found it yet.

Any change on this. It would be most useful, particularly a choice of "submit reply" "preview" and "clear fields"

I am forever editing my UBB codes simply because I don't pick up my mistake in the posting frame.

OK, how about vBulletin? Looks like you folks are considering a move to that software (due at least in part to UBB's tendency to corrupt when too many people post to a forum at once).

vBulletin is probably our board of choice in the near future and does have this feature.