Soft As It Gets Help & Support

Today I added a new article and wanted to add a link to the online source.  Since the source, The Chronicle of Higher Education, was already in the article, I highlighted it with the mouse, which brought up a trio of possibilities: Create Web Link, See Also Link, or Add Tag.  I chose the first and put the URL into the form that appeared.  To my surprise, that didn't add a link to the highlighted text but instead created a separate link at the top of the article.  I have two suggestions: 1) If text is already highlighted, make the highlighted text a live link (this is what is done in Gmail and most forums), don't create a separate link elsewhere.  2) If a new link is being created not using highlighted text, let the person editing the article determine where the link should go rather than Clibu arbitrarily putting it at the top. 

I've attached a file that illustrates what I've said.  The words circled in red are the words I highlighted, but instead of making them into a link, Clibu put the link at the top of the article.  That has the additional disadvantage of being the first thing that appears when the article is collapsed (I want the title to be the first thing--indeed, often the only thing--I see when an article is collapsed.

Hi, Neville.  Thanks for your reply.  I'm glad to know that the link should always be on the text I select.  I tried to reproduce what happened, but this time the link was created NEXT TO the highlighted text (as in the bug you described in your reply).  All the feedback I've offered so far has been with my using Pale Moon, a terrific Firefox clone that I've been using now for well over a year (including flawlessly with Surfulater). 

After I read your message, I decided to see what would happen if I used a different browser.  I tried the three other browsers I have on my computer: Firefox 28 (the last version before Australis), Opera 12.17, and Internet Explorer 11.  Firefox put the link next to the highlighted text, ( as had Pale Moon in my attempt to reproduce what I had reported earlier).  However, with Firefox, to make the link I had to use the Add Link icon on the main toolbar, since the floating 3-option box didn't pop up as it does in Pale Moon.  I next tried Opera, but when I tried to log in to Clibu Beta, Opera 12.17 couldn't connect to the server!  I tried several times and then moved on to Internet Explorer.  I was able to log in to Clibu Beta, but I couldn't collapse or expand articles.  I added an article but I couldn't put in a link--the three-option floating thingie never popped up, and even clicking on the Add Link icon on the main toolbar did nothing.  So even though the link feature has problems even in Pale Moon, it works better in Pale Moon than in any of the other browsers I tried.  (I don't have Chrome on my computer and have no plans to add it.) 

One more quirk about Clibu in Pale Moon: if I want to go to the site to which I've made a link, I can't click on the link in the normal way.  I have to put my mouse over the link so that the actual URL appears and then click on that URL.  That's another bug, I think.

 

Hi Neville,
I'm glad to know that you occasionally test on Firefox, since Pale Moon works very much like Firefox (only better :-) ).  As you know, I can't offer any feedback using Chrome.
I was surprised when you said that clicking on a link switches the link to editing mode, since that's not the way links usually work.  It also means that instead of clicking once, I have to click on the link and then click again on the URL that pops up.  Since clicking just once is the norm, having to move my cursor to the URL and click again seems less efficient.

 

Thanks very much, Neville. 

 

Hi, Neville.  I've just come upon a different sort of link problem, but rather than start a new thread, I thought I'd add to this one, especially since one of the issues is one discussed here.  The most serious problem is a new one: today I added an article to my Clibu knowledge base (Clibu version 0.80.65), but I didn't see Clibu add a link to the website, so I added one at the end of the article.  To my surprise, when I looked a bit later, I saw some mess at the very top of the article.  It turned out that Clibu apparently HAD added the link, but it was very poorly placed, so poorly that it was almost invisible.  I've attached a screenshot.

The second problem is that simply clicking on the link didn't take me to the website.  It was hard to get the link to do anything because it was so poorly placed, but when I finally did get it, what it did was just bring up a second link, which is the one I was supposed to click on.  I complained about this many months ago, pointing out that it is somewhat confusing and not at all in keeping with the normal practice of clicking once on a link.  I'm disappointed that this strange behavior still is in place.

The third aspect of the problem probably stems from the second.  Because I had a hard time activating the link because Clibu placed it so poorly, it took me many tries.  But my browser (the Firefox-based Pale Moon) repeatedly blocked my attempts to activate the link, since what I was activating was a pop-up, and Pale Moon (and, as I recall, Firefox) blocks pop-ups.  I can tell Pale Moon to permit all popups on Clibu, but I think a much better solution would be to make the link clickable with one click rather than clicking on the link, bringing up a pop-up link, and then clicking on that.

I hope some of this feedback will prove helpful.

 

Hi Neville,
Thanks VERY much for this fix and the notification that you'd made it.  I've now tried clicking on some links in articles I'd saved in Clibu, and clicking on the link now works the normal way, no more pop-ups.  This is in Pale Moon, so it's likely that it works in Firefox as well.  BTW, when I went to Clibu to try this out, I found that I already had version 0.83.00.  Are the updates made automatically? 
Again, many thanks!
Joan