End-User Options - Abbreviations/Acronyms (MathJax Compatible)

Overview

This product allows you to define a set of abbreviations/acronyms that will have a tooltip explanation defined for your users who may not be familiar with these abbreviations and will find an explanation useful. You can define which areas of your site this product is active and your users can also decide if they wish for the product to be active for them in their settings. If you use MathJax on your site for mathematical expressions, you will find this product is completely compatible with it, and will not break such expressions.

Upon installation, a custom user profile field is auto-created to allow your users control over use of this product, and this field is deleted if you uninstall the product.



The product settings are divided into two primary groups: the first pertaining to the abbreviations/acronyms and the second to your implementation of MathJax. If you are not using MathJax, then you can simply ignore that section.

Abbreviations/Acronyms Details

Here you will find a textarea for defining your list of abbreviations and acronyms. Each one should be place on a separate line, with the abbreviation/acronym first, then a pipe symbol ("|"), followed by the explanation you want to appear in the tooltip. If you wish for your tooltip to contain line breaks, then use "\n" (without the quotes) for these breaks. When you save your settings, the list is alphabetically sorted to make locating these definitions easier in the future.

Next, you can set the areas of your site in which this product will be active, including Posts, Signatures, Private Messages, Visitor Messages and Group Messages.

You can then set whether you wish for this product to be active for guests.

MathJax Details

If you do not use MathJax, then you need not make any changes here.

If you do use MathJax, then first you need to define whether you have their script(s) manually defined in your templates or if you are using my product for its dynamic implementation. I recommend using my product for the most reliable and efficient compatibility.

If you use MathJax's default delimiters, then you need not change them, as the defaults are already defined by this product. However, if you have defined your own delimiters, then all delimiters you have defined need to be given in the delimiter settings.

Updates:

Version 1.1:

• I discovered a MySQL function I was using was deprecated as of 5.5, so I replaced it with a query.
• Fixed bug whereby the preview of a post in a new thread now shows the acronyms.

Version 1.2:

• Fixed bug where "/" character in an abbreviation caused a PHP error.
• Fixed bug where acronym at the beginning of a text string will now work.

Version 1.3:

• Profile filed number of auto-created field cached so a db query is no longer required each time text is parsed.

Version 1.3.1:

• HTML special characters may now be used in abbreviations/acronyms.

Version 1.4:

• Admin options processing more efficient.
• Added setting for "Active Forums."
• Fixed issue where hex colors within COLOR BBCode containing abbreviations broke posts.

Version 1.4.1:

• Dotted underline is now the same color as the text.

Version 1.4.2:

• Fixed issue with non-Latin characters.

Compatibility:

Tested and working on VB 4.2.x and should work on all 4.x versions of vBulletin.

Backup/Warning:

This product alters your database, however it is always good practice to make regular backups and you should make a backup before installing ANY new mod.

As always, products are USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I will provide support and do my best to help but no absolute guarantee is offered.

To Install:

1.) Download and extract the attached .zip file.
2.) Upload the contents of the "upload" folder to your forum's root directory.
3.) Follow AdminCP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product.
4.) Click on "Choose File" and browse to the product .xml file that was packaged in the .zip file.
5.) Click "Import."
6.) You MUST enable the product in the settings before it will function.
7.) Configure the remaining settings to your liking. Each setting has a detailed explanation of its use.

Support for this product can be found here:

• MHB - Abbreviations/Acronyms (MathJax Compatible)
• TAZ - Abbreviations/Acronyms (MathJax Compatible)

[KevinL]

Great work once again!

Any future plans (or could it be added) that this is only allowed in certain forums? Some of the forums the abbreviations aren't really needed or mean different things.

Thanks again!

[MarkFL]

Originally Posted by KevinL

Great work once again!

Any future plans (or could it be added) that this is only allowed in certain forums? Some of the forums the abbreviations aren't really needed or mean different things.

Thanks again!

I hadn't planned on it, but I can add a setting for active forums. However, having forum-specific lists of acronyms I don't plan on doing as that would be overly convoluted and simply not worth the effort to code.

[KevinL]

Originally Posted by MarkFL

I hadn't planned on it, but I can add a setting for active forums. However, having forum-specific lists of acronyms I don't plan on doing as that would be overly convoluted and simply not worth the effort to code.

Excellent! No. One set is perfect as long as it can be shut off - or not included in chosen forums.

Also I just noticed it trying to rewrite a color code. In the post the color was changed to [ COLOR=#0000CD ] And there was an abbreviation for CD so it broke the code and distorted the whole post. Not sure if there is a way to combat that. But I thought I would bring it to your attention.

Thanks Mark!

[MarkFL]

Originally Posted by KevinL

Excellent! No. One set is perfect as long as it can be shut off - or not included in chosen forums.

Also I just noticed it trying to rewrite a color code. In the post the color was changed to [ COLOR=#0000CD ] And there was an abbreviation for CD so it broke the code and distorted the whole post. Not sure if there is a way to combat that. But I thought I would bring it to your attention.

Thanks Mark!

Thanks for letting me know...I will include a fix for this along with the active forums setting.

[MarkFL]

Update - Version 1.4:

• Admin options processing more efficient.
• Added setting for "Active Forums."
• Fixed issue where hex colors within COLOR BBCode containing abbreviations broke posts.

[KevinL]

Thanks for the update.

Another thing that was noticed if browsing the site on mobile or tablet the underlined words are now tiny compared to the normal words. It can get a little distracting if there are enough abbreviations.

Thanks again Mark

[MarkFL]

I don't use any mobile devices, so I wouldn't be able to test that. That likely has to do with a HTML shortcoming in the browsers those devices use.

[KevinL]

The only way I could fix it if I added the following to the headinclude template. If I didn't include the If statement it distorted the rest of the forum. This issue only seems to come up on Chrome for mobile. Firefox mobile seems to work without issue

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread'">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=auto, initial-scale=1">
</vb:if>

I was looking to use something like this https://osvaldas.info/elegant-css-an...obile-friendly within your mod but I didn't know where to start right now haha It seems to be working OK except for mobile devices but you already stated it wouldn't work so we're good.

Thanks for the great work Mark!

[hugoroger]

Nice @MarkFL! I installed this one to use it combined with the blurbs plugin. Question. Do you know if we can configure the abbreviation to be a hyperlink? As in, instead of just appearing the help text, can we add a link to it ? I tried using bbcode to add it but it didn't work. Is this something possible?

[hugoroger]

Hey again Mark! Just wanted to add a quick folloe up.

Okay.. so I went ahead and installed this plug in (FUZZY SEO Auto Linker) to try to create links in the blurbs but apparently it didn't work. :/

I have an example here. Where I used the blurb plug in to add the word : "joyXwriter" to the bottom of all posts. Now, you can see I configured the hyperlink correctly because in the OP, I added the same sample word by text and the auto linked picked up. Does the plugin(Abbreviations/Acronyms) support this option with HTML or BBcode?