"Hullo" to the folks at DnD Beyond! In general, I absolutely love the entire website and the functions therein.
That being said, the issues with style formatting in the homebrew creators are pretty annoying. Basically, whenever a stylistic choice is made (most notably with the Bold, Italicize, and Underline functions,) they get stuck and all future text entries are forced to copy that style. The ONLY way to fix this is to delete the entire paragraph (including newlines) the style was applied to and start over; even cutting and pasting the text will simply cut and paste the formatting error as well.
While I haven't programmed word-editing software, I can pretty easily guess what the problem is. Essentially, there are certain criteria in place in the text editor where the invisible style characters in the string (something like /b, /i, or /u,) are not always selected by the cursor. Likely, these style characters attach themselves to other, similarly-invisible characters like Space or Newline (/n) at the END of the character instead of the beginning, and as a result cannot be deleted since the cursor gets stuck between the Newline/Space character and the style character, as shown below:
(/n)[Cursor](/b)
Then when you hit backspace you are left with:
[Cursor](/b)
Then you type and you get
"Slam Attack"[Cursor](/b)
And because the (/b) is at the end, it bolds the "Slam Attack" you just typed.
The solution to this would be to have the formatting characters applied to the beginning of a string rather than the end, so they can be selected and deleted by the cursor, like so:
(/b)(/n)[Cursor]
Then write a method that has the cursor select the all invisible formatting characters (/b/i/u) automatically whenever the character in front of it (newline character /n) is selected. Just to be safe, have a contingency method where if there are no characters between (/b) and the cursor, (/b) is automatically deleted. The problem where this will occur automatically if you hit the "bold" button before you start typing can be solved by having an invisible placeholder character if there isn't one already, which is deleted automatically as soon as another character is typed:
[Cursor]
User clicks "bold" button:
(/b)(invisible placeholder character)[Cursor]
User starts typing:
(/b)"Slam Atta"[Cursor]
Even if I'm totally off-base about how the program handles the characters, the examples I gave should be analogous enough to the actual program to fix the problem. You can have that one for free, I just want the problem fixed. Thanks so much for the hard work you guys have put into the site so far! :)
the editor for description fields in homebrew is the same one in use here on the forums.
When you activate italics you can just click the icon on the toolbar to toggle it off and the text you type from there will not be in italics. Same for bold, underline etc. 😊
That's what it is supposed to do, but it works very poorly in both the editor and the homebrew creator. For example, here's what happens when I paste something from the Aarakocra stat block (no space copied):
Talon.
Now, The cursor at the end of the period when I pasted it had only italics toggled on, not bold and italics, even though as soon as you start typing the Bold/Italics style is applied anyway.
Talon.This is what happens and only Italics was on to begin with.
When I click away and click back to the exact same spot, both the bold and italics are toggled. If I toggle them off and click away, when I click back again to the exact same spot they are toggled on again. If I copy and paste the text as shown below, it STILL only displays italics as turned on. If I hit "bold", "italics" is toggled off at the same time as "bold" is toggled on.
Talon.this is what happens when I do that.
Now, I copy/paste a new Talon heading, toggle bold/italics off again, press Spacebar, and begin to type without bold or italics. Despite the fact that I toggled them off, the space character between the bolded and italicized text and the new text is still bolded and italicized. So if I want to go back and change anything I'll have to do it again.
Here's one of my favorites. When I have bold and italics turned on and I copy/paste something over, it bolds and italicizes everything. This isn't a problem initially, but if I have something written like so:
Talon.
And I want to paste like so:
Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.
What I get is:
Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.
Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage. <- And this is what happens when I paste a whole line if I forget to turn bold and italics off on a new paragraph. Also when I started typing after the pasted content, selected the text I wrote, and toggled bold and italics off it selected the whole paragraph. If I hadn't noticed and started typing it would have deleted the whole thing and written over it, of course in bold and italics.
Whoops that's weird, neither the bolded nor italicized buttons are toggled on and yet my text is coming out like this. I keep clicking both buttons and it's not fixing it. So looks like my paragraph is stuck until I either delete both it and the bullet point below, or go down below the next example. Let's say I remember to untoggle "bold" so it won't bold my pasted content. I paste below, like so.
Talon.Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.
So I can see there's an extra space in front of "Melee" even though I only pasted one space. So I click [Cursor]Melee to backspace the extra space. It doesn't work, so I keep clicking it.Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.
Wait what just happened? my cursor just magically teleported to the beginning of the now-backspaced bullet point and moved the whole sentence to the previous paragraph as I backspaced.
Honestly, that wasn't even an example I was trying to make. I was trying to show how the backspace key would start deleting the end of the sentence even though my cursor was nowhere near it. The formatting is so broken that when I try to replicate the circumstances under which the original bug happened, another bug gets in the way instead. There are way more formatting bugs I've found but I am actually on a time crunch today.
Hopefully this can get sent to the tech team to iron out the kinks, because it looks like only a few people in the community have brought the problem up in the forums even though I'm sure it's driving a lot of people nuts.
That’s because you’re mixing up what D&D does, and what your browser is doing. DDB uses <em> (“emphasized” aka “italics”), <strong> (bold),<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> (underlined). It’s your browser’s use of <i>, <b>, and <u> that’s fouling things up. If you look at the topic these fields, you can see the grey buttons. Yes? Click the one with this symbol to see the HTML: </> That will let you adjust the code directly.
I don’t think it’s asking too much for a popular website like this one to be cross-compatible with the major web browsers.
1. That debugging fix might save more time than just deleting several lines and starting from scratch, but it’s twice the headache, and not an option for users that aren’t tech-savvy.
2. The fact that I’d have to mess with the html code to begin with is a huge red flag that there are problems that the site needs to fix.
3. The issues persist even if you aren’t copy/pasting from other tabs, indicating it isn’t just a browser problem. There are all sorts of issues that pop up just from writing everything from scratch within a given text box. Which is absolutely a failure of implementation on the part of the text editor.
I don’t think it’s asking too much for a popular website like this one to be cross-compatible with the major web browsers.
1. That debugging fix might save more time than just deleting several lines and starting from scratch, but it’s twice the headache, and not an option for users that aren’t tech-savvy.
2. The fact that I’d have to mess with the html code to begin with is a huge red flag that there are problems that the site needs to fix.
3. The issues persist even if you aren’t copy/pasting from other tabs, indicating it isn’t just a browser problem. There are all sorts of issues that pop up just from writing everything from scratch within a given text box. Which is absolutely a failure of implementation on the part of the text editor.
You don’t have to mess with the HTML, that was merely pointed out so you could independently verify what I was saying. As long as you use the grey buttons for the field to make things bold, italicized, or underlined, then as soon as you’re done typing you can click those buttons again to deactivate them and continue typing without any issues.
So you can start out, type whatever you need to type, and then continue on without any issues, without deleting and re-entering anything, and without ever looking at the HTML.
"Hullo" to the folks at DnD Beyond! In general, I absolutely love the entire website and the functions therein.
That being said, the issues with style formatting in the homebrew creators are pretty annoying. Basically, whenever a stylistic choice is made (most notably with the Bold, Italicize, and Underline functions,) they get stuck and all future text entries are forced to copy that style. The ONLY way to fix this is to delete the entire paragraph (including newlines) the style was applied to and start over; even cutting and pasting the text will simply cut and paste the formatting error as well.
While I haven't programmed word-editing software, I can pretty easily guess what the problem is. Essentially, there are certain criteria in place in the text editor where the invisible style characters in the string (something like /b, /i, or /u,) are not always selected by the cursor. Likely, these style characters attach themselves to other, similarly-invisible characters like Space or Newline (/n) at the END of the character instead of the beginning, and as a result cannot be deleted since the cursor gets stuck between the Newline/Space character and the style character, as shown below:
Then when you hit backspace you are left with:
Then you type and you get
And because the (/b) is at the end, it bolds the "Slam Attack" you just typed.
The solution to this would be to have the formatting characters applied to the beginning of a string rather than the end, so they can be selected and deleted by the cursor, like so:
Then write a method that has the cursor select the all invisible formatting characters (/b/i/u) automatically whenever the character in front of it (newline character /n) is selected. Just to be safe, have a contingency method where if there are no characters between (/b) and the cursor, (/b) is automatically deleted. The problem where this will occur automatically if you hit the "bold" button before you start typing can be solved by having an invisible placeholder character if there isn't one already, which is deleted automatically as soon as another character is typed:
User clicks "bold" button:
User starts typing:
Even if I'm totally off-base about how the program handles the characters, the examples I gave should be analogous enough to the actual program to fix the problem. You can have that one for free, I just want the problem fixed. Thanks so much for the hard work you guys have put into the site so far! :)
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D&D Beyond FoundersHi there,
the editor for description fields in homebrew is the same one in use here on the forums.
When you activate italics you can just click the icon on the toolbar to toggle it off and the text you type from there will not be in italics. Same for bold, underline etc. 😊
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
That's what it is supposed to do, but it works very poorly in both the editor and the homebrew creator. For example, here's what happens when I paste something from the Aarakocra stat block (no space copied):
Talon.
Now, The cursor at the end of the period when I pasted it had only italics toggled on, not bold and italics, even though as soon as you start typing the Bold/Italics style is applied anyway.
Talon.This is what happens and only Italics was on to begin with.
When I click away and click back to the exact same spot, both the bold and italics are toggled. If I toggle them off and click away, when I click back again to the exact same spot they are toggled on again. If I copy and paste the text as shown below, it STILL only displays italics as turned on. If I hit "bold", "italics" is toggled off at the same time as "bold" is toggled on.
Talon.this is what happens when I do that.
Now, I copy/paste a new Talon heading, toggle bold/italics off again, press Spacebar, and begin to type without bold or italics. Despite the fact that I toggled them off, the space character between the bolded and italicized text and the new text is still bolded and italicized. So if I want to go back and change anything I'll have to do it again.
Here's one of my favorites. When I have bold and italics turned on and I copy/paste something over, it bolds and italicizes everything. This isn't a problem initially, but if I have something written like so:
And I want to paste like so:
What I get is:
Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage. <- And this is what happens when I paste a whole line if I forget to turn bold and italics off on a new paragraph. Also when I started typing after the pasted content, selected the text I wrote, and toggled bold and italics off it selected the whole paragraph. If I hadn't noticed and started typing it would have deleted the whole thing and written over it, of course in bold and italics.
Whoops that's weird, neither the bolded nor italicized buttons are toggled on and yet my text is coming out like this. I keep clicking both buttons and it's not fixing it. So looks like my paragraph is stuck until I either delete both it and the bullet point below, or go down below the next example. Let's say I remember to untoggle "bold" so it won't bold my pasted content. I paste below, like so.
So I can see there's an extra space in front of "Melee" even though I only pasted one space. So I click [Cursor]Melee to backspace the extra space. It doesn't work, so I keep clicking it.Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) slashing damage.
Wait what just happened? my cursor just magically teleported to the beginning of the now-backspaced bullet point and moved the whole sentence to the previous paragraph as I backspaced.
Honestly, that wasn't even an example I was trying to make. I was trying to show how the backspace key would start deleting the end of the sentence even though my cursor was nowhere near it. The formatting is so broken that when I try to replicate the circumstances under which the original bug happened, another bug gets in the way instead. There are way more formatting bugs I've found but I am actually on a time crunch today.
Hopefully this can get sent to the tech team to iron out the kinks, because it looks like only a few people in the community have brought the problem up in the forums even though I'm sure it's driving a lot of people nuts.
That’s because you’re mixing up what D&D does, and what your browser is doing. DDB uses <em> (“emphasized” aka “italics”), <strong> (bold),<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> (underlined). It’s your browser’s use of <i>, <b>, and <u> that’s fouling things up. If you look at the topic these fields, you can see the grey buttons. Yes? Click the one with this symbol to see the HTML: </> That will let you adjust the code directly.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I don’t think it’s asking too much for a popular website like this one to be cross-compatible with the major web browsers.
1. That debugging fix might save more time than just deleting several lines and starting from scratch, but it’s twice the headache, and not an option for users that aren’t tech-savvy.
2. The fact that I’d have to mess with the html code to begin with is a huge red flag that there are problems that the site needs to fix.
3. The issues persist even if you aren’t copy/pasting from other tabs, indicating it isn’t just a browser problem. There are all sorts of issues that pop up just from writing everything from scratch within a given text box. Which is absolutely a failure of implementation on the part of the text editor.
You don’t have to mess with the HTML, that was merely pointed out so you could independently verify what I was saying. As long as you use the grey buttons for the field to make things bold, italicized, or underlined, then as soon as you’re done typing you can click those buttons again to deactivate them and continue typing without any issues.
So you can start out, type whatever you need to type, and then continue on without any issues, without deleting and re-entering anything, and without ever looking at the HTML.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
How do I add bullet points to a snippet?