Suggestion Emoticons

[LegoLad659]

Hey,

I was gonna make a long post about emoticons and how they're handled bugs me, but I eventually lost track of where it went and where it was going, so I'll just keep it short XD

To start off, in casual conversation, I'm one of those people who use emoticons. A lot. However, I don't like the look of the current emoticons (Sorry, Ghost - No offense, I promise!) Now, this wasn't a problem back on IPS, where we had the default emoticons, as well as others which were smaller and I liked better. However, now that we've moved back to xF, those alternative icons are now gone - With the exception of the basic smiley face, for some reason - so now I keep finding myself removing emoticons from my posts and it just makes the general flow of my speech feel very awkward and unemotional.

Back before we initially moved to IPS, RPN had a system for emoticons that I thought was brilliant; Instead of simply looking for the two bits of text that made up an emoticon and replacing it with the icon, it only replaced the text if it was surrounded by parentheses (With the exception of the kappa icon, which while I never personally had any problems with it, I know of at least one instance where someone else did) It was more precise in knowing where you wanted emoticons, it only took two more keys and less than a second of extra time to type them out (And if it's such a massive pain to press 9/0, while you're already holding shift for the emoticon anyway, then I really don't know what to say) and it let us decide whether or not to use the icons rather than having them forced upon us. I missed that system when we moved to IPS, and though at that time I was okay with it because of the alternative icons, its absence here is just so incredibly glaring now because of the lack of said alternatives, that I find myself wishing I had a way to simply use the text versions of the emoticons instead. But because the site replaces those text versions with the icons, well... Now I'm just repeating myself at this point.

I know I'm likely alone in this line of thinking - God knows I am in practically every other subject - but I thought I'd toss the idea out there. Just in case anything stuck. Is there any chance we could go back to that old system?

(...This was supposed to be 'Short'. Great job, LegoLad XD)

 

[Kaerri]

I didn't realize that's how they were done before. In fact I can't remember whether I used them at all on xF before IPS (but probably not, if they worked like that).

I tried to keep the shortcuts to what came up only as usual emoticons ( the : ) for example) to avoid messing with text that wasn't supposed to change. IPS would let the text stay unconverted if there were other characters as part of the word, but it seems xF doesn't (links looked particularly odd because of :/ ). What shortcut commands are used for emoticons are definitely up for discussion because I really don't want to interfere with anyone's communication. I've taken B) off the list, for example, because I noticed in my own posts it was converting when I didn't want it to; I'd be happy to do the same for others.

I don't have the IPS emoticons; we left those behind with the IPS software. I can turn on the xF ones if you want but it seemed most people didn't really like them. (The default smile emoticon is up, for comparison.)

Feel free to request changes! I don't promise to implement them all, because I have to keep the wider user base in mind, but these are supposed to enhance the experience, not take away from it. I had added : to the end of several already, to avoid issues I already knew about. I've also changed the way the shortcuts display when you hover over them in the smilie chooser, so that you can see which character combinations will result in a conversion.

 

[LegoLad659]

I didn't realize that's how they were done before. In fact I can't remember whether I used them at all on xF before IPS (but probably not, if they worked like that).

I tried to keep the shortcuts to what came up only as usual emoticons ( the : ) for example) to avoid messing with text that wasn't supposed to change. IPS would let the text stay unconverted if there were other characters as part of the word, but it seems xF doesn't (links looked particularly odd because of :/ ). What shortcut commands are used for emoticons are definitely up for discussion because I really don't want to interfere with anyone's communication. I've taken B) off the list, for example, because I noticed in my own posts it was converting when I didn't want it to; I'd be happy to do the same for others.

I don't have the IPS emoticons; we left those behind with the IPS software. I can turn on the xF ones if you want but it seemed most people didn't really like them. (The default smile emoticon is up, for comparison.)

Feel free to request changes! I don't promise to implement them all, because I have to keep the wider user base in mind, but these are supposed to enhance the experience, not take away from it. I had added : to the end of several already, to avoid issues I already knew about. I've also changed the way the shortcuts display when you hover over them in the smilie chooser, so that you can see which character combinations will result in a conversion.

My main gripe with the Ghost emoticons is that they're way too big and overly cutesy, in my opinion. Based on the xF smiley that's currently up, they're simpler, smaller, and I like it better. Like I mentioned, I know I'm probably alone in this opinion, so I'm not expecting anything to come out of this really - You don't have to do anything if you believe it's better for the userbase. I just thought I'd let you know that there's at least one person who would appreciate some alternative to the Ghost icons ^.^

(And again, I'd like to reiterate that I don't mean any offense to Ghost or anyone who does like the emoticons. I don't know why I'm so worried about this XD)

 

[The Dark Wizard]

One of the great things about IPS (Very very very few good things) but one great thing is the fact that it had support for Emoji (utf8mb4) support. This means that users were hardly using our site made emotes and were instead using icons found on their operating systems/phones, etc.

The little icons you use in texting for example are Emoji, just code that the actual OS translates into a picture. Emotes are images, which is what we have here. Proper utf8mb4 support is coming for xf2!

Here is the patchnotes from their alpha.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

Basically emoji are magical like font awesome because they aren't images, but font that your OS/Browser translates.

 

[Kaerri]

My main gripe with the Ghost emoticons is that they're way too big and overly cutesy, in my opinion. Based on the xF smiley that's currently up, they're simpler, smaller, and I like it better. Like I mentioned, I know I'm probably alone in this opinion, so I'm not expecting anything to come out of this really - You don't have to do anything if you believe it's better for the userbase. I just thought I'd let you know that there's at least one person who would appreciate some alternative to the Ghost icons ^.^

(And again, I'd like to reiterate that I don't mean any offense to Ghost or anyone who does like the emoticons. I don't know why I'm so worried about this XD)

Personally I like the cutesy, but I respect that others prefer other things. I've enabled the xF emoticons so those who want to use them, can. Just click on the smilie button in the Rich Text Editor to bring up the window (it'll be below the text box) and then click the "xF default" tab.