It's REALLY annoying when, after having written some lines in a PM, you click 'send' ... and get an error saying one or more fields is empty, please go 'back' and correct your error (I often forget to fill out the 'Subject' in a PM).

It's even more annoying when you go 'back' and find that all the text you'd written, has now disappeared.

Am I being stoopid, and/or is there a cure for this?

Nope. Not stoopid at all...I and others have done the same thing. I agree it's annoying. I know of e-commerce sites that have lost sales and customers because of the same thing. It's not that hard to fix with some additional coding around the forms.

Something else that should be added to Evan's "to do" list

I can suggest it to the folks at UBB threads, but not sure when they'll get around to it.

My solution is that when I'm writing a long PM or post, I do it in word so that it's getting spell checked at the same time. That way I can't lose it--and lemme tell you, I've lost many a long post & PM response.

-em

Damn. That's right - I keep forgetting about the separation of your code and that of UBB. Funny thing is, I seem to remember not loosing the PM text when I did the same thing in an earlier version of UBB. Was that really the case or am I hallucinating?

From what I've seen, IE remembers what you have typed when you click back and forward. Netscape/Mozilla never do. It's not just this board, but any online form you're filling out, webmail, etc.

The easiest thing to do is before clicking submit is to select all the text and copy it. CTRL-A then CTRL-C. That way you can paste the text back in if you lose it.

You're not hallucinating (or if you are, we're sharing the same trip).

Maybe something about the UBB implementation? Dunno.

GO

Nope - I'm on IE6. It 'remembers' other forms, but not this one. When I remember to copy text before I (try to) send, life is fine, but that's usually anticausal.

i would disagree quanto. Mozilla 1.0/5.0 does remember what was in the form. its in your security preferences i think.

Heh heh... yeah, a lot of people disagree with me.

Mozilla may keep the text after you click submit if you check the forms box, I haven't tried that. But if you click back and forward again, the text is gone. IE, from what I remember, does keep the text so if you click back a few times to check the original post or others in the thread (opening them in a new window), you can still click forward and the text will still be there.

Point was that it's simple to select the text and copy, getting into the habit as a backup to the technology that should do it automatically. You might say we shouldn't have to take the extra steps; yeah, we shouldn't, but since technology isn't perfect, taking the extra step saves time and headaches when it fails. Like checking to see if a twist-lock biner is really locked- we shouldn't have to take that extra step, the technology should ensure the biner is locked; but I still check it every time because I don't want to trust that technology blindly.

oh fer sure, i try to get all my friends to copy paste their looong webmail messages...