NEW FORMATTING FOR THE FORUM IS LIVE!

Courtesy of @MuttonChops , here is a useful diagram to show you how to create a hot link 🔗 n your post

This is an heic image that gave an error initially and now seems to have loaded, but only shows when on the mobile site

Still waiting for ideas on the text editor from Vanilla @MuttonChops

@MuttonChops Concerning underlining text in a post, there are no realistic ways I could discover to change this in the text editor.

Suggestions are to consider Bold or Italics for the text you might have otherwise underlined, to make it more prominent.

Request : Adding Underline

The Verdict: Locked out by design choice, but natively bypassed by the keyboard.

• The Underline Tool: Vanilla deliberately excluded the underline button from their modern text formatter. In modern web standards, underlining text that isn't a clickable hyperlink is considered a major design flaw because it confuses readers trying to click on it. There is no admin toggle to force it back into the toolbar.

On the mobile site the image looks like this:

This was the original question above:

New format does not support HEIC photo uploads that MAC users sometimes have . The old version used to support this, now I can not upload photos any longer . HEIC is a pretty modern photo image format , surprised the new updated forum does not support it ?

@B0atguy I found a plausible explanation for the HEIC issue. We added the HEIC image format to the forum "whitelist", so the image is accepted but it cannot be displayed unless on Mac or Iphone.

Here is the technical reason:

Subject: Technical explanation regarding HEIC image upload display issues

The forum platform accepts .heic file uploads because the format is explicitly permitted on our asset whitelist. However, the ability to view the image depends entirely on the web browser being used by the reader.

Apple includes native HEIC decoding within iOS and macOS, which allows Safari users to view the files normally. Windows desktop browsers—including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox—lack the decoding architecture required to display HEIC files inside standard web templates.

Because the forum serves files exactly as they are uploaded without converting them to web-standard formats on the server side, PC users see a broken image icon.

Resolution:To ensure all members can view your photos, please save or convert your images to JPEG or PNG before uploading. You can set your iPhone to automatically save photos in a globally compatible format by going to Settings > Camera > Formats and checking Most Compatible.

This was elevated to tech support at Vanilla, so will see what they say.

UPDATE from Vanilla:

 
I’m going to pass your detailed write-up along to our product/engineering team as part of the ongoing ticket they’re already reviewing, so they can consider options like automatic conversion or clearer handling of HEIC uploads. 
 
In the meantime, the most reliable workaround is still to convert photos to JPEG/PNG before uploading, or to set iPhones to “Most Compatible” so they save as JPEG going forward.

Kind Regards,

Michael Heil
Senior Customer Support Specialist
Higher Logic Vanilla

qhumberd

OK. That worked, but sure would be nice if we could still edit within a normal quote window. Any logic as to why that feature was removed?

Here is the technical explanation I got:

Still need to verify this…

Technical Reasons for Quote Limitation in Vanilla Rich Editor

The inability to highlight part of a post and directly convert it into a partial quote stems from two architectural choices in the HigherLogic Vanilla software: immutable block nodes and editor selection boundaries.

1. Immutable "Rich Quote" Blocks

When you click the default "Quote" button under a post, the platform does not copy plain text into the editor. Instead, it generates a specific structural data type called an Atomic Block Node inside the editor's React framework (Slate/Plate).

• The Mechanism: To preserve accurate tracking data (the original author's identity, the precise timestamp, and the database link back to the source post), the software locks this node.
• The Result: The editor treats the entire quote container as a single, indivisible object—identical to how it handles an attached image file or an embedded YouTube video. Because it is a locked object, the cursor cannot edit, select, or delete text strings within it; it can only select and delete the entire container.

2. Isolation of Clipboard Selection Boundaries

When a user highlights text from a prior post on the screen and uses standard copy-and-paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V), the process fails to create a quote box due to how browser memory interacts with the text editor.

• The Mechanism: Highlighting text on a webpage wrapper occurs outside the boundary of the active text editor program. The operating system clipboard only copies the raw text characters, stripping away the forum's structural identity data.
• The Result: When pasted into the editor window, the software reads it as standard, unformatted text characters and places it inside a normal paragraph block. The editor cannot automatically assume the text came from a previous forum post versus an external website, so it does not format it as a quote.

3. Absence of a Global Selection Listener

Some web platforms feature a "Quote Selection" option, where highlighting text anywhere on the page triggers a pop-up button to quote only that text.

• The Status in Vanilla: For this to work, the forum software must run an active script across the entire webpage wrapper that constantly monitors mouse selections, captures the exact text fragment, maps it to the author data of that specific post container, and injects a custom blockquote node into the editor. HigherLogic Vanilla's modern editor does not contain this global selection listener framework.