Please please PLEASE can I post umolested URLs? (IMGUR, YouTube)

[Ichinisan]

This forum's attempts to auto-embed certain IMGUR and YouTube URLs is extremely frustrating.

- An IMGUR album URL gets embedded in such a way that people assume it's just a single image and they don't get to see the rest. PLEASE allow me to post just a URL so it can be clicked / tapped as a normal URL.

- Please give us a way to opt-out from auto-embedding IMGUR direct image references. When I need to post multiple URLs or manually-embedded images from IMGUR, there is no way to avoid the mangling that happens from this forum auto-embedding some of them. Even when the post preview appears correct, the submitted post will have some inconsistently applied auto-embedding that mangles everything.

- Embedded IMGUR videos or animated GIF images are almost always completely unresponsive on iOS devices. The image is frozen / not animated, and tapping it does not take me to IMGUR.com nor the mobile app as it should. Maybe 1 out of 5 embedded IMGUR images actually allow me to get to the site or app by tapping the image, so I can finally see it animate / play and finally see what someone posted. This occurs in mobile Safari on any device, regardless of iOS version. I frequently reset a device and set up as a new device (not restoring a backup), so this has nothing to do with my settings.

- Any YouTube URL that I post with a time stamp in the URL will automatically lose the time stamp reference when the forum converts it to an embedded video against my will. Even if I edit the post to add the time stamp reference to the video ID between the "MEDIA" tags, it just breaks the embedded video completely.

I don't understand why I'm not presented with a way to avoid this completely broken auto-embedding nonsense.

 

[balloonshark]

You probably know this but as a workaround you can put a link between code tags. It won't be clickable but it will remain untouched.

https://imgur.com/b6b0Fu7
https://youtu.be/ugRc5jx80yg?t=270

 

[CZroe]

You probably know this but as a workaround you can put a link between code tags. It won't be clickable but it will remain untouched.

https://imgur.com/b6b0Fu7
https://youtu.be/ugRc5jx80yg?t=270

Yes, but this should be the standard behavior for ANY tag.

Did I put it in IMG tags? Don't touch my URL and let me embed the image.

Did I put it in a URL tag? Don't touch my URL and let me make my freakin' hyperlink.

FFS, whoever implemented this broken BS should have known better while they were coding it.

 

[Ichinisan]

Still a problem. I needed to post a YouTube URL that starts at a specific time, but I can't. My URL gets modified by the forum software and turned into a "MEDIA" item. The specified start time is removed completely.

 

[allisolm]

I have let the Future folks know about this. Hopefully they will give you a response.

 

[CZroe]

Breaks every IMGUR link too. Can't even quote the message to grab the URL manually.

 

[jsimenhoff]

PLEASE allow me to post just a URL so it can be clicked / tapped as a normal URL.

This feature already exists:

https://imgur.com/CksWRhO

Please give us a way to opt-out from auto-embedding IMGUR direct image references.

You can do this by using the image insert tool in thread creation tool bar.


Image below was posted in this manner. You could also use the bbcode:

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/RhZm0XU.jpg[/IMG]

for the same result.

Embedded IMGUR videos or animated GIF images are almost always completely unresponsive on iOS devices.

Can you show me an example? This is the first report I've heard of this. What browser or app are you using to browse the forums? We recommend apatalk for the best experience on mobile.

Any YouTube URL that I post with a time stamp in the URL will automatically lose the time stamp reference when the forum converts it to an embedded video against my will.

This works fine for me.

Oh Happy Day - The Edwin Hawkins Singers

This track is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. From 1969.

youtu.be

 

[Ichinisan]

PLEASE allow me to post just a URL so it can be clicked / tapped as a normal URL.

This feature already exists:

https://imgur.com/CksWRhO

That is not a simple URL. That is an embedded object.

Please post a clickable / tappable URL for...

- a YouTube video
- an IMGUR picture
- an IMGUR album

Try posting this without "CODE" tags and watch what the forum software does to it

http://yewtewb.com/blahblah?videoidblahblah#timecode

 

[Ichinisan]

Didn't take long for that first image to be completely broken:

Absolutely would not happen if the forum didn't convert it into some stupid embedded object thing.

I see absolutely no value whatsoever in the strange container thing. It's nothing but trouble.

 

[CZroe]

This feature already exists:

https://imgur.com/CksWRhO

...and it's still broken.

You can do this by using the image insert tool in thread creation tool bar.
View attachment 11830

Image below was posted in this manner. You could also use the bbcode:

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/RhZm0XU.jpg[/IMG]

for the same result.

...except that IMGUR links are not always embeddable images. We'd literally be better off if you didn't try to do anything with them.

Can you show me an example? This is the first report I've heard of this. What browser or app are you using to browse the forums? We recommend apatalk for the best experience on mobile.


This works fine for me.

Oh Happy Day - The Edwin Hawkins Singers

This track is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. From 1969.

youtu.be

Not for me. I see the video twice and both of them link me to the start of the video from Tapatalk on Android.

 

[jsimenhoff]

That seems like an issue with tapatalk since it works fine here. See the screenshots above. Unfortunately that is not something we can troubleshoot. You may want to contact their customer service or google for a solution.

 

[Ichinisan]

Any YouTube URL that I post with a time stamp in the URL will automatically lose the time stamp reference when the forum converts it to an embedded video against my will.

This works fine for me.

Oh Happy Day - The Edwin Hawkins Singers

This track is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. From 1969.

youtu.be

Same video, different time stamp::

https://youtu.be/EfGDvDGE7zk?t=3m7s

Pasting that URL into the address bar of my web browser works fine. Let's see what happens when I paste it here:

[edit]SURPRISE! I click the title (because I have no interest in watching it embedded). It takes me to YouTube at the START of the video and there is no timestamp in the URL.[/edit]

Let's try the one I tried earlier this morning...

Bear in mind, I don't know of a practical way to get a non-shortened YouTube URL on mobile devices because the YouTube app only gives shortened URLs and the web browser usually kicks you back to the app.

https://youtu.be/G-ssDk6QiAo#t=44s

https://youtube.com/watch?v=G-ssDk6QiAo#t=44s

1-5: Hop! Hop! Donut Lifts - YOSHI'S ISLAND - Perfect 100 - SNES CLASSIC - NO COMMENTARY 1ay

⠀ Wanna see more? Check the feed:https://www.youtube.com/c/nintendothumb/feedThank you for watching! Please Share and Subscribe for more New Videos All Day...

youtu.be

1-5: Hop! Hop! Donut Lifts - YOSHI'S ISLAND - Perfect 100 - SNES CLASSIC - NO COMMENTARY 1ay

Wanna see more? Check the feed: https://www.youtube.com/c/nintendothumb/feed Thank you for watching! Please Share and Subscribe for more New Videos All Day, ...

youtube.com

Now it's just being inconsistent. Now it's converting the URL to some kind of embedded "URL" container, even though the other example earlier was automatically embedded as "MEDIA"

OK, let's see what happens when I manually use the MEDIA tags like it automatically applied to your example.

[edit]
Can't. Forum says a post can't have more than two pieces of media.

I'd prefer none! I'd love to be able to post like this

- url
- url
- url
- url

I don't even want to embed the video or put the URL into any kind of container / preview nonsense. I just want to post a text URL that doesn't disguise the address or hide the start time, and someone can click it if they want to.

 

[CZroe]

View attachment 11833
View attachment 11834

That seems like an issue with tapatalk since it works fine here. See the screenshots above. Unfortunately that is not something we can troubleshoot. You may want to contact their customer service or google for a solution.

*sigh*

It's only an issue with Tapatalk because the forum is mucking with the URL... which is exactly the kind of crap I would expect to happen when implementing something like that and exactly why I wouldn't do it if it were my forum and exactly why Ichinisan (who isn't even a Tapatalk user) is asking for a work-around. I don't see what the benefit is at all to even weigh the pros and cons.

Just sayin'

 

[jsimenhoff]

@CZroe Tapatalk was installed by request from user feedback. To be frank, we would rather not use this service but too many of you lifers wanted it.

I can't reproduce any of your issues @Ichinisan . If any users have similar issues let us know, but at this point I can't troubleshoot anything.

 

[SHaines]

I'll do some digging on this as well. I took your link for the above video and pasted it into a test post where it started up at 3:07, as expected.

However, when I right click on it to get the URL, it does strip out the time stamp and starts the song from the beginning. It may be something we can resolve (I'll need to do some digging) but it'll be fairly low priority with all the work currently on the plates of our dev team.

Once I've had time to get into it further, I'll post an update. Please be patient with us. Thanks!

 

[CZroe]

@CZroe Tapatalk was installed by request from user feedback. To be frank, we would rather not use this service but too many of you lifers wanted it.

I can't reproduce any of your issues @Ichinisan . If any users have similar issues let us know, but at this point I can't troubleshoot anything.

The manipulation is breaking mobile browsers and Tapatalk. You just can't have a good experience on mobile and I can't even say it helps desktop users (seriously: how?). Why do that to your forum for no reason? Extra work and it inevitably breaks something for everyone.

 

[Ichinisan]

I can't reproduce any of your issues @Ichinisan . If any users have similar issues let us know, but this point I can't troubleshoot anything.

You didn't try what I suggested.

Post a URL.

A URL.

Not an embedded object or a container preview or whatever.

https://www.google.com/search?q=test

https://www.google.com/search?q=test&tbm=isch

http://youtube.com/watch?v=G-ssDk6QiAo&t=44s

https://imgur.com/gallery/O8tAXJY

Without code tags, do these look like URLs?

test - Google Suche

test - Google Suche

https://imgur.com/a/O8tAXJY

Nope. They don't look like URLs any more.

The Google image search hyperlink can't be distinguished from the generic search hyperlink. Lovely.

Since the album link is now an embedded container object, most people seeing the post will assume it's a single image and never see the rest of the images in the album.

 

[Ichinisan]

Identified an annoying inconsistency just now. If I prefix the URLs with numbers, the Google search URLs behave differently. This whole auto-container thing is nothing but trouble.

Without numbers:

https://www.google.com/search?q=test

https://www.google.com/search?q=test&tbm=isch

test - Google Suche

test - Google Suche

With numbers:

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=test

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=test&tbm=isch

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=test

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=test&tbm=isch

This automatic container embedding nonsense just makes everything unpredictable and inconsistent. It really is awful. There's no good reason to do it aside from helping people who don't know how to embed images (and ONLY images). There should be a way to toggle-off the automatic encapsulation BS per-user or per-post.

 

[CZroe]

I'll do some digging on this as well. I took your link for the above video and pasted it into a test post where it started up at 3:07, as expected.

However, when I right click on it to get the URL, it does strip out the time stamp and starts the song from the beginning. It may be something we can resolve (I'll need to do some digging) but it'll be fairly low priority with all the work currently on the plates of our dev team.

Once I've had time to get into it further, I'll post an update. Please be patient with us. Thanks!

We used to have a checkbox for bypassing the forum's automatic emoticon conversions. This was often needed because the forum would convert something that wasn't an intentional emoticon into a smiley-face image.

Something that tells it not to parse URLs for whatever it is doing would work just as well. Granted, I wouldn't be able to use it in Tapatalk but I could at least compose something that works from a browser when I need to. Just a simple checkbox? Heck, I'd probably turn it off for my whole user account if possible since I can't see a reason to ever let the forum handle my URL formatting.

 

[ElFenix]

i wouldn't be shocked if it's a "feature" of the latest version of xenforo and can't be disabled. another popular board software only lets you use the "smart" editor, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so dumb. quote handling is particularly terrible.

 

[balloonshark]

I also find it terribly annoying when I copy/paste text like the name of a product on amazon and the forum automattically adds bold, size or other tags. The only way to remove them is to toggle the BB code and remove them manually or just paste the text to notepad first, recopy the text and paste it here. It's really freakin' annoying cause it's something I do a lot.

 

[Spacehead]

This feature already exists:

https://imgur.com/CksWRhO

When i first looked at this thread i saw a clickable link for that image(https://imgur.com/CksWRhO) & was wondering what Ichinisan was complaining about. After clicking on the link & once i could see the image there (allowing sites in NoScript), the image is now embedded into the post.

Both of the YouTube links in post #7 start at the beginning no matter what i do. Is that supposed to start 3 minutes in?

I can't reproduce any of your issues @Ichinisan . If any users have similar issues let us know, but at this point I can't troubleshoot anything.

This is on a desktop using Firefox

@Ichinisan
Looks like for some links you can use "Insert Link", add the URL but no text.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I suspect there will be problems linking to the "approved media sites":
Apple Music
Dailymotion
Facebook
Flickr
Giphy
Imgur
Instagram
Liveleak
Metacafe
Pinterest
Reddit
SoundCloud
Spotify
Tumblr
Twitch
Twitter
Vimeo
YouTube

I also find it terribly annoying when I copy/paste text like the name of a product on amazon and the forum automattically adds bold, size or other tags. The only way to remove them is to toggle the BB code and remove them manually or just paste the text to notepad first, recopy the text and paste it here. It's really freakin' annoying cause it's something I do a lot.

Totally agree with this too!

 

[Ichinisan]

I also find it terribly annoying when I copy/paste text like the name of a product on amazon and the forum automattically adds bold, size or other tags. The only way to remove them is to toggle the BB code and remove them manually or just paste the text to notepad first, recopy the text and paste it here. It's really freakin' annoying cause it's something I do a lot.

Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows)
Command+Option+Shift+V (macOS)

 

[balloonshark]

Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows)
Command+Option+Shift+V (macOS)

Most of the time I am using the keyboard shortcut in windows to copy and paste.

 

[Ichinisan]

Most of the time I am using the keyboard shortcut in windows to copy and paste.

Yeah. Ctrl+Shift+V should paste as plaintext, so it doesn't have formatting.