Posting support questions to the community - formatting? Markdown?
Gotta say I'm rather disappointed with the Mozilla support community forum here. It seems very poorly set up, unless I'm missing something. Perhaps I'm just missing the forum formatting page here.
The post form starts with asking "Which topic best describes your question" - well none of the ones offered. e.g. this question is about support, and that doesn't fit a category.
For technically literate users, often questions and posts will have code snippets etc in them, but there doesn't seem to be formatting support beyond bold, italic, links and bulleted lists? Is that right? No markdown for code?
Code with four spaces leading - does that work?
three quotes separated text
fenced code block? Does this work at all?
Not seeing a preview your question button either, so one posts blindly without knowing if it's legible or not.
When I've tried to paste some detailed email header info in a question it was terribly displayed which can't help getting community analysis and input.
These aren't new features for community forums. One would think them standard.
Is there a posting guide for this support forum that provides formatting info that I might be missing? Is there another support discussion page somewhere else - perhaps stackExchange is more active?
Chosen solution
Okay with lack of preview, I've posted and it appears that some of that formatting did in fact do something, but it's a bit random.
Four spaces leading worked for one line, but is impractical for a big code block.
In the three quotes separated text it turned the first line into bold and separated it from the rest of the quoted text.
For a block of html, let's see how the 3quotes is handled.
<script src="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/gtm-snippet.f1a8b29a563ecd7a.js" nonce="FbSY12R1N1GUN037K+alzw=="></script> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Posting support questions to the community - formatting? Markdown? | Thunderbird Support Forum | Mozilla Support</title> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/apple-touch-icon.bdc11b610d791a16.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon-32x32.2143cdf0c7e3f377.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon-16x16.352a0a2cef154dda.png"> <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon.03d97697df808c0e.ico"> <meta name="theme-color" content="#ffffff"> ''' Oh there's a preview Reply button, but I didn't see a preview for the original post. Doesn't look like it handled the block-quoted code very well. Oh well.
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Suluhisho teule
Okay with lack of preview, I've posted and it appears that some of that formatting did in fact do something, but it's a bit random.
Four spaces leading worked for one line, but is impractical for a big code block.
In the three quotes separated text it turned the first line into bold and separated it from the rest of the quoted text.
For a block of html, let's see how the 3quotes is handled.
<script src="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/gtm-snippet.f1a8b29a563ecd7a.js" nonce="FbSY12R1N1GUN037K+alzw=="></script> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>Posting support questions to the community - formatting? Markdown? | Thunderbird Support Forum | Mozilla Support</title> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/apple-touch-icon.bdc11b610d791a16.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon-32x32.2143cdf0c7e3f377.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon-16x16.352a0a2cef154dda.png"> <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://assets-prod.sumo.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/static/favicon.03d97697df808c0e.ico"> <meta name="theme-color" content="#ffffff"> ''' Oh there's a preview Reply button, but I didn't see a preview for the original post. Doesn't look like it handled the block-quoted code very well. Oh well.
And a final test, selecting my reply message as a "solution" it totally reformatted it.
Now the quoted code block is compressed into a mass of text.
Okay - test complete. Hopefully a better support forum can be installed someday.
To enter a code block, surround it with preformat tags:
<pre>code</pre>
Click the Preview Reply button to see the effect.
Don't precede paragraphs with a space, as it makes the text unwrapped in the resulting display.
Thanks for the info - good to know! Strangely the "preview" button is only offered for replies, and not for original questions. Original questions just have a 'cancel' button in its place. Rather limits the detail in question posting.
The Mozilla forums lack a lot of basic features present in other forums, even those related to Mozilla products, such as Bugzilla, reddit, mozillazine. I guess that reflects the organization's actual, as opposed to professed, commitment to user support. A $600M organization, with a CEO making $7M, produces a forum that would have looked poor in 2005 (no disrespect intended to SUMO workers).
Indeed - needs to rethink its situation in a big way. This isn't the path to a positive future.
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