Problem typing long entries into the Forum posting window

[Rona Kwestel]

Lately I'm finding that while typing a post in this forum, once the post is long enough to exceed the height of the input window, the area where I'm typing keeps jumping below the visible section of the window, and I can't see what I'm typing or selecting. In other words, the window keeps scrolling itself up so that the input cursor is below the bottom of the input window. If I scroll it back down to the bottom, I can see where I'm up to, but as soon as I start typing again, it jumps back up. This makes it extremely frustrating to post long queries/responses. Given the complexity of issues, and the ability to embed code and images, most posts will almost certainly be longer than the input window height.

Is anyone else having this problem? I'm using IE8.

Thanks.

[RamonS]

Hi!
Use Firefox, it is a much better browser and I never encountered these issues. I use IE only to get Windows updates, for anything else I consider it too dangerous. IE is just bad software and should not be used.

[Andrew]

I occasionally have that problem Rona, both here and in other phpBB3-based forums. It's not all the time -- I have no idea what causes it. I've made some long posts where it doesn't happen, and some where it does. It's a bug with phpBB3.

[Rona Kwestel]

Thanks Ramon and Andrew. Whether it's a phpBB3 bug, or an IE bug, when you consider how many people use these kinds of bulletin boards, and how many people use IE, you would think someone would have found it annoying enough to fix. In any case, I'll try installing Firefox to see if it solves the problem for me.

In the meanwhile, I've taken to editing my long posts in Word, and then just copy/pasting them back into the posting window. It's just too painful to do it when the input location keeps jumping off the screen.

[Andrew]

Thanks Ramon and Andrew. Whether it's a phpBB3 bug, or an IE bug, when you consider how many people use these kinds of bulletin boards, and how many people use IE, you would think someone would have found it annoying enough to fix. In any case, I'll try installing Firefox to see if it solves the problem for me.

In the meanwhile, I've taken to editing my long posts in Word, and then just copy/pasting them back into the posting window. It's just too painful to do it when the input location keeps jumping off the screen.

I'd imagine it hasn't been fixed because it doesn't happen all the time (at least, it doesn't always happen to me).

While Firefox appears to fix that issue, the keyboard shortcuts (like alt-s to post a reply) don't work.

[KevinDAmery]

Another possibility with IE8 is to run the site in compatibility mode. This is allows IE8 to run sites the same way as older versions of IE did. (which when you think about it is a really ugly kludge, because it's going back to the bad ol' proprietary IE renderer instead of the closer-to-open-standards version in IE8... but otoh, it works....) I have to use that here for the bug tracking system we're sharing with a partner company. (Which won't run at all in Firefox, otherwise I'd be using that )

[Rona Kwestel]

Ooh, let's see if Compatibility View works.

I'm going to type
lots of lines
to see
what happens
when I get
to the bottom
of the window
and hope
that the cursor
doesn't try to
escape!
Two more lines
to go
and the conclusion is...


It works!

Thanks, Kevin!