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yg17

macrumors Pentium
Original poster
Aug 1, 2004
15,030
3,009
St. Louis, MO
I used to be able to hit Ctrl+S to submit a post, now it doesn't seem to be working on this site. It works on other vBulletins....is it just me or did something change?
 
Yes, it changed, and on purpose.

Ever since the shortcut feature was introduced in vBulletin, many forum members have been accidentally submitting posts or new threads before they were finished typing them, by mistakenly touching the control key (or alt key under Windows) while typing.

We have removed a small convenience (using control-s or alt-s to submit a post) to avoid frustrating and embarrassing those posters, to keep the clutter of half-typed posts out of the forums, and to make less cleanup work for the moderators.

You and other posters are welcome to give us feedback about this change and about our decision that it is worth the tradeoff.
 
Doctor Q said:
Yes, it changed, and on purpose.

Ever since the shortcut feature was introduced in vBulletin, many forum members have been accidentally submitting posts or new threads before they were finished typing them, by mistakenly touching the control key (or alt key under Windows) while typing.

We have removed a small convenience (using control-s or alt-s to submit a post) to avoid frustrating and embarrassing those posters, to keep the clutter of half-typed posts out of the forums, and to make less cleanup work for the moderators.

You and other posters are welcome to give us feedback about this change and about our decision that it is worth the tradeoff.

Is there a thread somewhere that the admins use to keep track of changes like this as they are being made?
 
Doctor Q said:
We have removed a small convenience (using control-s or alt-s to submit a post) to avoid frustrating and embarrassing those posters, to keep the clutter of half-typed posts out of the forums, and to make less cleanup work for the moderators.

:( So far it's frustrating me more when I automatically go to hit ctrl s and nothing happens than seeing the odd half complete post? The dumbing down of MR ;)

Still, I guess I wasn't the one cleaning them up so if it was that much of a problem, whatever. I'll get used to scrolling down and hitting Submit again eventually.

Has the smiley thing changed too? I thought that the cursor stayed active in the reply box after you clicked a smiley but it seems to be different too?
 
What about, when you hit alt+s, a Javascript dialog that says something like "Are you sure you want to submit this post?"

I could live with alt+s, then enter.
 
elfin buddy said:
Is there a thread somewhere that the admins use to keep track of changes like this as they are being made?
No, but then again changes like this are very few and far between. Some sites apply numerous patches ("hacks") to vBulletin, but we don't.

If we'd realized where the trouble was coming from last year when it began, we might have changed it then and nobody would have gotten used to this convenience at all.

Applespider said:
Still, I guess I wasn't the one cleaning them up so if it was that much of a problem, whatever. I'll get used to scrolling down and hitting Submit again eventually.
Although we've had to clean up many dozens of threads/posts submitted accidentally, we had no way to assess the number of times people intentionally use control-s. Nobody had reason to speak up on that feature's behalf until now, and it's unlikely many people will speak up on behalf of "error prevention" now that we've taken care of it.

Has the smiley thing changed too? I thought that the cursor stayed active in the reply box after you clicked a smiley but it seems to be different too?
It works for me (Safari 2.0.4) and should not have changed.

yg17 said:
What about, when you hit alt+s, a Javascript dialog that says something like "Are you sure you want to submit this post?"
That's possible in theory although, again, MacRumors tries to avoid tinkering much with the forum software. We've disabled the shortcut key and didn't plan to do more than that, but nothing is ruled out yet.
 
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