very possible to delete your post before you finish it, with one keystroke!

hi all!

here I was, writing a Real Good post, complete with quotes and comments, and then I used the "backspace" key and the "enter" key to backspace and to scroll down and POOF, the whole 1000+ characters just went Away!!
And...no way to "backpage" to go back to them!

???

Is there anyway to prevent this, other than prewriting a post in,say, wordpad or Office?!

I thought that I would warn others; seems easier here to do this than in other forums. Whatever I did do, the whole screen just deleted in one second. One keystroke.

Now I will be much more careful, even posting a post *before* spell checking it, to make sure my Work of Art remains there!

freestone

reply to post by freestonew


Yes I know that one!

Iv'e done it too many times, but because I type fast I have not yet worked out which stroke deletes it all, I know it really is annoying

I did it again about a week ago, I decided not to press any buttons but just scrolled up the page and found my post - but this has been a one off!

Could it be a timer on ATS that causes it?

yea,, it's always the good ones that get deleted compose it in a word program first, it's the only way to go.

[edit on 1/8/2009 by Sauron]

Since I have some experience with computers ... there is no way site/person/server (whatever not on your computer) could just undo your post until you actualy post it. The only expemt would be trojan horses or viruses since this kind of software is running on your computer and can monitor "every move you make". I think you've somehow managed to select all text in the input box before pressing "space" (or any other key for that matter) ... I'd suggest next time you write text in external editor (like notepad, word, notepad++ or whichever software you prefer) and copy/paste it ... probably you'll have to format it additionaly but at least content will still be there on your computer.

Hitting Ctrl and the "z" key will undo anything that you've inadvertently done, such as deleting a whole post!

Just hold Ctrl and "z" and your text will come back.

Yup CTRL-Z will undo as well as writing your posts in Wordpad or Microsoft Word or whatever else will greatly decrease these annoyances.

~Keeper

Microsoft Word is what many and myself use. Of course any word processor will do.

reply to post by octotom


Thank you for posting this. I had no idea. I am a tech-tard. Would have come in handy about a week ago on this board.

I usually use Word to avoid this problem, but didn't on that occasion.

Very appreciative of this info!

reply to post by freestonew


Yeah, I found this out after working for several hours on a short story entry. I poured my heart out, told one epic story, and just before the ending was pounded out on the keyboard, I did the same thing. I cried. I'm not even gonna lie about it, I cried! Still upsets me.

I have be afraid to use the BACKSPACE key here on ATS for that reason. When I hit the BACKSPACE key it jumps BACKPAGE and you lose your post. I have had this happen so many time I have lost count. I even went as far as to update all my drivers and buy a new keyboard. I have got so I use Word and type there and do a copy and paste to post on ATS. I do not have this to happen on any other site but ATS. I would not mind it if I could disable the BACK key on ATS. I want BACKSPACE not BACKPAGE. I am just glad to see that it is not just me but other people are having this problem as well.

reply to post by fixer1967


Backspace moves to the previous page in most, if not all, web browsers, but if you have the blinking cursor inside the text area where we write our posts then backspace will work as in any word-processor.

You just have to be careful to see if the text area is active (with the blinking "I-beam" cursor).

With Opera (the browser I use), if I hit backspace and return to the previous page by mistake I just have to move forward again, Opera is smart enough to understand that first I went back and now I am going "back to future", and it will show the text as I left it when I hit backspace.

Opera is a very useful browser.

Another annoyance is that redo / undo don't seem to work (at least in Google Chrome).

In general if I'm writing a long post I compose it in a text editor like Wordpad then paste it into the browser when I'm done. And ctrl-a / ctrl-c a lot just in case you make a mistake, then at least your text is on the clipboard.

reply to post by mattpryor


Yes, the clipboard is our friend, I also do that before doing anything possibly destructive.

And, if I may make some more publicity, undo and redo work fine in Opera.