Tech Note: The Two-Minute Comment-Editing Pencil Icon
In the 10 years we’ve been online, the single feature most requested by LGF users has been the ability to edit comments after they’re posted, to fix typos, bad HTML tags, etc. Sure, we have a nice Ajax-based preview function that lets you see exactly how your comment will look when you post it, but in the heat of the moment it’s easy to hit that “Post” button without previewing … and then your Great American Comment is enshrined for eternity with “dog” misspelled as “dopg.”
Tonight, we’re proud to announce that after years of requesting and complaining, LGF commenters can finally edit their own comments after posting them! Click the pencil icon that appears at the upper right of your comment, and an Ajax dialog box lets you edit the text of the comment and save the changes.
There are limits on this awesome power, as there must be.
You have two minutes after posting your comment to decide you need to change something.
Once you click the pencil icon and open the editing dialog, you have five minutes from the time your comment was posted to submit your changes.
We’re deliberately keeping the time limits rather short, because the idea is to quickly fix a typo, not rewrite an entire comment.
Also, once your comment is posted, everyone who has already loaded it in their browsers will continue to see the old, unedited comment until they reload the page. There’s no easy way to force all the browsers out there to reload edited comments, unfortunately.
One of the LGF sayings that has persisted over the years is, “Preview Is My Friend,” abbreviated as “PIMF.” Now you have another friend — the pencil icon.