Xenforo Extended Smilies

Xenforo Extended Smilies 1k

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Assuming you're looking for feedback on that, it's WAY too confusing. Both the copy and the graphic need simplification.

The reason I posted my notes on how to work with smilies at this link to was to straighten out the material so I could change it to something good. I'd agree, way too confusing in the copy and the graphic.

Explanation of Why I Posted Confusing Copy and Graphic

In the Army, we called it field expedient. When I was in school in London, I heard people call things like this, "Doing it in a pinch."

Maybe confusing is good, because the smilies deal is confusing to anyone who is new to it. Is there anyone new to XenFor in the last 6 months who says it not confusing? If there is, I will delete my post in a heartbeat while awaiting the one from the who says it is not confusing. I would expect people with long term experience do not find the smilies confusing. I don't see how that helps the new guy, except as an example of the fact that they do work and they can be understood.

A Guide to XenForo Smilies

I could not find the steps to follow anywhere, I had to suss them out with the clues I found somewghat hap hazardly. Writing a guide to XenForo smilies at my company would be done by a team of programmers and PhD technical writers. It would take them a few weeks if it was a priority job, which they would schedule weeks ahead of when it was needed, and the result would be awesome. The engineer we had in that area is possibly the smartest person I ever met. She was a great communicator and her work always was perfect. I figured the PhD tech writers would stamp Good Job on her work, then head for beer, but they changed it a lot. At Even though she gave them a perfect guide, everything was correct, clear, nice graphics, well organized, no typos, easy to follow, I think the the tech writers changed almost every single word she used, made all new graphics, creating a guide I could not have envisioned, but saw right away, it made our software so much easier for someone unacquainted with it to learn what it does.

Criteria for Posting
My test before posting this was not,"is this a good guide?", because I do not think I could make a good guide if I spent a week on it, not compared to a really good guide. I also thought about Well Known Members and decided, their response to this will affect my reputation, but not the goal I had in posting this.

My Goal
My goal was to share my working notes, organized enough that they are more helpful posted than not posted.

My Experience on Smilie Road
When I started, my goal was to find put 100 smilies my boss's site over a period of a few days. I counted Shelly's at 103. I had a couple hundred up in a few hours. I had to do a few delete/reloads of the smilies to get them working, without having blanks or duplicates.

Needs to be Added to My Notes
The XML packaged with some of the smilies created a controversy that went something like this:

First Guy (Who Just Attempted Installing Smilies, came looking for help and maybe to vent): :mad:How come when I did the installation precisely as instructed, using your xml, the smilies are not appearing?:mad:

2nd Guy (who released the smiles) : :mad: The xml is right.:mad:

3rd Guy (Smilie Veteran): They work for me :):coffee:

First Guy (like later that day or next day) :mad: No, I fixed :mad::mad:your:mad::mad: XML, removing the leading slashes, and now they work when they didn't before!!!:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
:mad:


The reason I report this is when I installed those exact smilies that were being discussed, using the xml that came with the smilies, checked the xml and its effect when loaded, I got the same results at the first guy and removing the slashes fixed them on my system, And for me, contrary to installation guide when I removed the slashes, everything worked

My XenForo Installation Must Be Wrong, or the XML with the Smilies Would Have Worked with Slashes

I cannot remember which smilies had this situation (I think it was the embola smilies). I will develop steps to reproduce this problem, including the xml with and without leading shashes and the result from both, and post then here.

Removing the forward slashes might have made the installation problem worse.:eek:
 
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The reason I posted to was to straighten out whatever the material so it would be good. I'd agree, way too confusing in the copy and the graphic.

Prior to seeing my post, were you in any way confused or wondering how they work?
No, I understood how they worked.
 
I looked in the table, called xf_smilies_categories, expecting to see data matching the tabs in smilie deal. My smilie deal looks like this:

upload_2015-1-18_0-3-6.webp

When I looked in the table ,xf_smilie_category, I expected to see a record for for Emojii, which I did, category2 is Emojii, but where does the word for the tab come from if not the xf_smilie_category record? Here is the whole xf_smilie_categorgy table:

upload_2015-1-18_0-6-43.webp


Ok, I think I found it. Is in the compiled phrase table (xf_phrase_compiled)
. Performance thing to have it there instead of its natural location (xf_smilie_category).?:sneaky:

Couldn't we compile all the keys and squeeze more performance from the database?

In fact databases are slow, why not put all the data in faster type of system, compile it into a binary? All that smilie data pretty static, it should not be in relational DB table if you can't category_name in a category table.

Seriously, we support loading of more than 100 smilies as individual files, fine, but we are not going to keep a smilie category name in the table of smilie categoreies? Do we have installations with more smilie categories than smilies? This seems like a case of racing to slam shut a barn door when the horse is out already.
 
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The smilie category table doesn't contain the label text because they are created as phrases so they can be easily translated in multilingual communities.
 
I looked in the table, called xf_smilies_categories, expecting to see data matching the tabs in smilie deal. My smilie deal looks like this:

View attachment 95246

When I looked in the table ,xf_smilie_category, I expected to see a record for for Emojii, which I did, category2 is Emojii, but where does the word for the tab come from if not the xf_smilie_category record? Here is the whole xf_smilie_categorgy table:

View attachment 95247


Ok, I think I found it. Is in the compiled phrase table (xf_phrase_compiled)
. Performance thing to have it there instead of its natural location (xf_smilie_category).?:sneaky:

Couldn't we compile all the keys and squeeze more performance from the database?

In fact databases are slow, why not put all the data in faster type of system, compile it into a binary? All that smilie data pretty static, it should not be in relational DB table if you can't category_name in a category table.

Seriously, we support loading of more than 100 smilies as individual files, fine, but we are not going to keep a smilie category name in the table of smilie categoreies? Do we have installations with more smilie categories than smilies? This seems like a case of racing to slam shut a barn door when the horse is out already.

There's a section to make suggestions with regards to anything regarding the xenforo smiley system which I'm almost 100% sure the devs will gladly listen to. https://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-suggestions.18/

I'm not really understanding what the issue is. Upload the smilies like a champ and the job is done. Suggestions for improvements/changes or extension to the smiley system would go into the suggestions area to avoid any more pollution in this thread.
 
There's a section to make suggestions with regards to anything regarding the xenforo smiley system which I'm almost 100% sure the devs will gladly listen to. https://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-suggestions.18/

I'm not really understanding what the issue is. Upload the smilies like a champ and the job is done. Suggestions for improvements/changes or extension to the smiley system would go into the suggestions area to avoid any more pollution in this thread.
I was mixed up.
 
I remember someone had put up an XML with all the coordinates of the Sprite to import. Does anyone have the old file and update it with the newer Sprite just uploaded by Shelley?

I found it!
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-extended-smilies-smilies-xml.67731/
Its missing spiderman and the strig. I will try and delete my old ones and add the new ones to create the xml.

Thanks again Shelley for your excellent work!

Edit2: I got it to work by breaking the file into 3 parts.
Code for the new smiley
Code:
 <smilie title="The Stig" display_order="1" display_in_editor="1">
  <image_url>styles/default/xenforo/xenforo-extended-sprite.png</image_url>
  <sprite_params w="18" h="18" x="-139" y="-42" />
  <smilie_text>:stig:</smilie_text>
  </smilie>
<smilie title="Spiderman" display_order="1" display_in_editor="1">
  <image_url>styles/default/xenforo/xenforo-extended-sprite.png</image_url>
  <sprite_params w="18" h="18" x="-139" y="-21" />
  <smilie_text>:spiderman:</smilie_text>
  <smilie_text>:spidey:</smilie_text>
  </smilie>
 
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FYI: Drool is not in the sprite sheet

If "Drool" is not on the spritesheet on the download here it wasn't ever designed. Checking the spritesheet psd spritesheet, the file it's not present on the PSD so I never got around to designing it.

no-drool.webp
 
@Aurèle Yeah, should work just fine. Technically, it's just an extended pack of the smilies after all. My board is using XenForo 1.5.2, and it has been using this from 1.4.x. By the way, you'll probably have to edit the attached SQL file somewhere on this thread. I believe it was made before the smilies categories feature was introduced, so the SQL file had some missing and/or incorrect "fields".
 
@DieselMinded It's better to just upload the spritesheet. And then use the attached sql file somewhere within this thread. Though if I remember correctly, the attached sql is rather outdated. I can get you the modified one that I've been using on my board till now though.
EDIT: Or you can use my smilies.xml instead.
 

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