When typing in the text box provided by user forums, why does FF15 remove double paragraph characters and IE does not?
Sometimes I use the message box to ask or answer a question posted in a forum. I use paragraphs for easier reading. To do that, I hit the Enter key twice in succession. When the message is then posted, something removes the 2nd paragraph character and the result is one long, hard-to-read message.
This happens frequently but does not happen when using Internet Explorer 7.
This happens on several forums. the DIY network and the Toyota World forums are good examples of this. I would like to know if other FF users have this problem and where to look to troubleshoot it.
This post contains four paragraphs and each is separated by a blank paragraph.
All Replies (7)
I see this does not happen on this forum, so I assume it is not caused by one of my FF add-ons or extensions.
Also, in thinking back, I have seen posts from other people that consist of one, long paragraph. I used to think that those posters were either to lazy to type Enter twice or didn't think to separate their posts with paragraphs.
I have added a screen showing the problem. This particular forum can be found at http://www.tacomaworld.com.
This forum treats white-space according to HTML conventions and one press of Enter is treated like a space.
However if there are more new line codes (\n or %0a) then you should get a new paragraph.
If you need more than one press of Enter on those forums then I assume that it works there the same way.
I don't know why multiple Enter presses get reduced to one Enter (linefeed) and thus show as a single space.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).
- Do not click the Reset button on the Safe mode start window or otherwise make changes.
Modified by cor-el
To create a new paragraph in forum posts I always use a double enter. Like in the old typewriter days. Like I do when typing this reply.
It appears that this "problem" is forum-specific, but nevertheless, my paragraph formatting is "ignored" (not really the right word) while other posters' paragraph formatting in the same forum is displayed with a "double carriage return".
If by "this forum" you mean the tacomaworld forum, please note that while it looks as though the double enters were treated as a space, the following reply does show paragraph separation. I've PMed the writer but so far have not received an answer.
With "this forum" I mean the Firefox support forum.<br />
Here you need to add a <br /> tag if you want to force a line break like I added to the above line for illustration, but not use Enter twice.
If a forum uses an HTML editor then you may need to use such methods to force starting on a new line.
Modified by cor-el
I appreciate your help but I'm not sure I understand everything. You wrote that in this forum (support.mozilla.org) I need to type in a
tag if I want visual separation between paragraphs; however, I don't really need to do that in this forum, nor in several (not all) other forums - just certain ones.
For example, I hit "Enter" twice to create this paragraph. No brk elements.
And again, I hit "Enter twice to create this one. :)
Thanks again for your help.
<p>does the same to skip a line.</p>
and start a new paragraph if you close that p tag.The above written lines were typed on one long line without a line break, but with the p tag to force the paragraph formatting.