Don't remove line breaks and formatting from article snippets

[Paul B]

Having a single block of text as the snippet isn't very aesthetically pleasing.

Ideally the line breaks would be preserved as they are in the original post (or make it an option).

Before:



After:


Some formatting could also be preserved, such as bold, italic, etc.

 

[Wildcat Media]

From your sample, the lists (ordered, unordered) could possibly be preserved, although if a list breaks in the middle of the preview, it might not be possible. URLs should possibly be preserved also, although unfurling could prove to be a problem.

 

[fionix]

Don't remove line breaks nor the formatting, it really limit the way you can design your ARTICLE listings.

 

[Blatchy]

was this ever implemented?

 

[Wildcat Media]

Not in 2.2 so far. Hopefully it's coming in 2.3.

 

[Old Nick]

We expect so many things from 2.3 that it will finally be called 3.0!

 

[Blatchy]

Anyone have a hack to at least retain the line breaks?

This seems like such a trivial thing that should be included in the stock install.

 

[Ladegro]

Maybe not the right place to offer suggestions, but it would help us immensely if you'd be able to define article preview breaks, eg. by using certain keywords of specific bbcode. That way you'd have full control about the text that is used in the preview instead of it defaulting to the first x characters etc... How would that become a considered enhancement? (or maybe someone with ideas how to build it yourself)

 

[Wildcat Media]

One thing that might be difficult to pull off is when there is a list near the top of an article. One of our weekly article features starts off with three or four lines of information, then goes straight into an ordered or unordered list, and a preview snippet would likely come halfway through that list. In its present state, the items in the list are run together.

Maybe not the right place to offer suggestions, but it would help us immensely if you'd be able to define article preview breaks, eg. by using certain keywords of specific bbcode.

I like this idea, in addition to automatically preserving the formatting. (In other words, if the BBCode isn't present to define the featured text, then limit the output to X characters.)

 

[Blatchy]

i agree

 

[PrettyPixels]

Agreed. This is important, especially when you're using the site for stories or articles.

 

[JoshH93]

Definitely agree. Preserving formatting like line breaks and bold text is key for readability.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Maybe not the right place to offer suggestions, but it would help us immensely if you'd be able to define article preview breaks, eg. by using certain keywords of specific bbcode.

I just remembered that I have used this elsewhere. Maybe a WordPress theme or plugin had it? It treated content above the shortcode as the preview. A BBCode like [break] between the sections, or a [articlepreview][/articlepreview] pair to encapsulate the preview text, rendering nothing differently while viewing the article, but using that to generate the preview. (Which, of course, would still be subject to a letter or word count restriction to fit within the preview style.)

I suppose one other hacky way to do this would be to create a new textarea field in the text editor where we could enter a custom article preview snippet. Maybe even call it a "summary." But that just makes things more complicated.