GrahamTheDev

Posted on Mar 2, 2022

I Am Warning You Don't Click!

#watercooler #discuss #html #meta

I told you not to click, this next part may cause you physical pain:

    this
⠀⠀  really
    shouldn't
  ⠀⠀bother
    me
  ⠀⠀this
    much

Making a "monospaced" font uneven, titles with lots of spaces that don't collapse...I call that pure evil!

I probably shouldn't have shared this as I can see it getting abused but...it was just too much fun! Muwahahahahaha 👿

Any other fun things we can do with this?

Let me know in the comments, perhaps with a little work we could actually include a code snippet in the title? Who knows!

And if you have no idea what is going on here or why this matters...try and add multiple spaces to a title on DEV, it will all become clear!

So is this a bug? I am not sure, I will leave it to people smarter than me to decide!

Top comments (20)

Ella (she/her/elle) • Mar 3 '22

I probably shouldn't have shared this as I can see it getting abused but...it was just too much fun!

Such an upstanding citizen smh... I'm starting to think you thrive on drama, mate!

Whilst you're clearly one to stir the pot, I feel that you've demonstrated your trustworthiness by not fully breaking things (have a 🍪). Still would have been nice if you'd filed a bug report for it instead of creating a subtle tutorial grumble grumble

I'm not promising that my commenting on your post guarantees it won't be unpublished somewhere down the line, but I wanted to take my opportunity to backchat you a bit whilst it's still up 😉

GrahamTheDev • Mar 3 '22

Hey, normally I would find this amusing and given our past interactions I will certainly give it the benefit of the doubt, but given recent events this doesn't sit well with me coming from someone associated with DEV.

Ella (she/her/elle) • Mar 3 '22

Which part of it do you object to, in particular?

GrahamTheDev • Mar 3 '22 • Edited

As I got banned for roasting someone (and they specifically asked for it), receiving a mini-roast from someone associated with DEV certainly does not sit well.

You were also unfortunate enough to mention that the article could be removed even after being read by yourself when the article in question that resulted in the ban had been read by members of the DEV team and then suddenly became an issue when someone with a sense of humour deficiency decided to take it all literally, going so far as to say I "berated" someone.

Couple it with "Such an upstanding citizen", "I'm starting to think you thrive on drama" and "you're clearly one to stir the pot" and you just happened to fall on the wrong side of things and had bad timing.

As I said we have interacted enough times that i know you meant nothing by it, you are just unfortunate to have hit on everything that would annoy me coming from someone at DEV / FOREM at the moment in just a few paragraphs (even the bug report bit as I even reported a bug while banned).

Send me some abuse on Twitter, same handle, you know I love it normally, it is just the "power dynamic" on here.

But not on here, on here you are DEV / FOREM and so it just feels highly inappropriate as it does not, from my understanding, fit here.

Ella (she/her/elle) • Mar 3 '22

Thanks for taking the time to spell that out. I understand where you're coming from, and I'm willing to apologize if it felt like I was in any way abusing a power dynamic.

I do want to shed some light on something you said: the DEV Community Team is a team at Forem, but it's not the entire staff of Forem. They are the people who make the difficult decisions about what content stays and what content needs to be adjusted, based on their assessment of the community's needs and responses to said content. It's an unenviable job (I should know, I used to be on that team and it was hard!), and they do a frankly incredible job balancing the diversity of voices and perspectives in the community.

the article in question that resulted in the ban had been read by members of the DEV team and then suddenly became an issue

Sometimes the rest of us may react to content that the Community Team ultimately decides to remove. That's on us for being a diverse group of humans with a range of perspectives on life, love, and the nature of the universe - but please don't hold it against them. They're kind, empathic people, doing the best they can to uphold a safe and welcoming space for others.

As for my comment on your post, if it was in bad taste, I'm sorry.

GrahamTheDev • Mar 3 '22

Nah it’s fine I’m just licking my wounds, you were just unfortunate with the timing!

Article removal, no issue, I will moan and move on as always, but ban and the way it was handled was what hurt given how much I interact and the fact that overall I try to be a positive force here.

Ignore me, you just hit me at the wrong time! Next time you roast me I will fire back with my normal vigour! ❤️

Ella (she/her/elle) • Mar 3 '22

Next time you roast me I will fire back with my normal vigour!

I'll come ready!

Temani Afif • Mar 2 '22

Reminds me when I was able to submit and empty question/answers on Stack Overflow: meta.stackexchange.com/q/359283/38... and they still didn't fix the issue one year later

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22 • Edited

Haha I love the fact that you essentially opened Pandora’s box with that one!

“Luckily” this article got insta black balled (suppressed in feed) so not many people will learn of this dark secret.

So I managed to get a ban and a suppressed article in a month…I am doing well 🤣

Pascal Thormeier • Mar 2 '22 • Edited

const why = 'is this centered'
console.log('oh no')

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22

Ah but at least in that one you are using deprecated HTML tags! I use it all the time on DEV lol!

Would have hurt my eyes more if you had included some curly braces and some nested loops...then I would never know what is going on 🤣

Pascal Thormeier • Mar 2 '22

Lemme try that:

const myFunction = (
  a,
  b,
  c
) => {
  return a + b + c
}

for (
  let x = 0;
  x < 100; 
  x++
) {
  for (
    let y = 0;
    y < 100;
    y++
  ) {
    for (
      let y = 0;
      y < 100;
      y++
    ) {
      console.log(
        myFunction(
          x,
          y,
          z
        )
      )
    }
  }
}

I'm not sure why I did this. Oh my word, imagine coding like this...

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22 • Edited

Ingo Steinke, web developer • Mar 2 '22

If there is a "thin space" character, that's probably a feature to have differing widths, although that should never be used in source code. Do common editors normalize that, like tabs, to ASCII space chars? a (useless?) "rabbit hole" of further reading about white space characters on Wikipedia (don't click, go back to work instead!)

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22

It is actually the opposite, thin space characters etc. all behave nicely. This one actually behaves like a "fat boy" character and is wider than a space.

The character in question is listed on that page...but not in the tables if that helps 😉

Pascal Thormeier • Mar 2 '22

You could - in theory - replace the title with a zero width space and add an h1 to the text, essentially switching the tags and the title.

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22

Oh dear, I love it! 🤣

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22 • Edited

So for those wondering, I found a whitespace character that isn't actually monospaced in a monospaced font.

I am not sure whether this is a bug or not as that character is important in some circumstances (I am not giving the game away as I don't want it to get abused), but should it be the same length as any other white spaced character in a mono spaced font?

I do not know (in fact I think it should be zero width in this instance, as long as it does not affect the required output as it is not a valid character in code as far as I am aware), so let me know in the comments what you think!

Andrew Bone • Mar 2 '22

I warning don't am you click!

GrahamTheDev • Mar 2 '22 • Edited

haha yeah, sadly I can't find a special character for a carriage return (uh oh, now I have another distraction!) so it is certainly optimised for desktop viewing and horrible on the feed / on mobile!

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I Am Warning You Don't Click!

Top comments (20)

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