VMP Sneak Peek: Slash Commands
15Sometimes, before we roll out new site features, we try them out on our guinea pi- er, VMP friends first.
We recently upgraded our forums with Mehdown 2.0 and @medz said:
Wasn’t there some way to search and insert gifs in-line? (as you are typing the post) Maybe it was VMP preview only. Maybe I dreamt it…
Must have dreamt it since we never had this feature before, but it did get us thinking maybe we could implement something similar to old IRC commands for our forums here.
We’ll be rolling out some slash commands with help from our VMP friends over the next few days. Same VMP Sneak Peek thing we’ve done before with Emoji, profile pages and other forum updates. We’ll release updates every day and respond to feedback along the way.
Today’s update allows VMP members to start comments and replies with /giphy [text] which will post a random GIF to the topic.
- 79 comments, 110 replies
- This topic was locked by shawn
/giphy first
/giphy second
not too long/did read - I don’t feel so techy lame now.
/giphy celebrate
/giphy third
/giphy huh?
And if I get this right if we go to edit and then save, the gif changes again? Love it, but I am not sure why yet.
Ok, it is just because I fucking love gifs and this make me laugh.
nevermind. It does!
@shawn Correct me if I’m wrong but hasn’t this been active for a few days now?
(I’m about 90% certain I’m not wrong, but I guess I could be clairvoyant) Assuming I’m not clairvoyant the reason I edited it out of a post I made the other day as I’m not super crazy about the whole slash command remaining visible thing, is it in the plans to hide that at some point?
Also, it wasn’t clear how /giphy would work syntax-wise, does it read every thing after the command or only the next immediate word? If the latter, how do I specify a multi-word query?
Edit: Interesting, I think I broke it upon editing.
/giphy celebration
@jbartus It has been active for a few days but we’re officially announcing it today.
We don’t have any plans to hide the command text at this point. Rather, I enjoy seeing that the author of the post used the /giphy command instead of just pasting a GIF URL. Scroll back up through this topic and imagine just seeing the GIFs without the command text. I think the text adds quite a bit of context.
Syntax-wise, like IRC commands and Slack’s implementation of slash commands you must start your post with the command and the arguments to the command will follow.
@shawn right but how far do the arguments go? To the first linebreak?
@jbartus arguments go to the end of the entire post.
It’s interesting to consider our use case might be slightly different than IRC or Slack here. In chat you don’t really have the need to mix commands with other content because you are rapidly posting content to a realtime stream. You can quickly follow up your command with an additional chat message.
In a forum it’s a bit different since you don’t typically follow up a comment with another comment right away. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a forum attempt slash commands so we might be in new territory facing new challenges.
@shawn yeah I think that’s the issue I’m having with it, it doesn’t really mesh quite right with the forum train of thought for me
@shawn So does that mean my taunting of @jimmyd103 below might have picked up on the “haha” at the end of my post and that’s why I have a laughing George Takei?
@jqubed exactly
/giphy gopens
This made my night along with a W by the Penguins.
Edit. Oh shit, I’m not a VMP anymore. Dammit!
/giphy gopens
@jimmyd103 that’s how they get ya…
/giphy inyourface
@jimmyd103 haha!
/giphy pandas
/giphy purple
Not quite what I was going for, but okay.
@PurplePawprints I redid mine because for me it pulled up a panda attack. I wanted to see sweet panda, not mean panda.
So it needs to be the first line of our post?
/giphy This doesn’t work
/giphy This works
Wow, uh, interesting choice, there.
@jqubed IRC slash commands need to be at the beginning too.
@Ignorant I’ve done so little IRC and it’s been years since I’ve been on one…
@jqubed Right, you need to start your post with the slash command and arguments to the command follow. We’re following the old IRC syntax and Slack’s implementation of slash commands. Something we can discuss as a VMP group is whether or not to deviate from this approach.
@shawn it seems to me parsing at the start of a line and inserting the GIF at the point of command might have more utility, then you can use it to inject a series of GIFs into a longish post whereas now it’s mostly good only for one-off GIFing
@shawn I think this is fine, as long as everyone understands how it works. No need to reinvent the wheel.
/me thinks you should leave it as is.
Or maybe allow it after an @ mention, if it’s not already set that way.
@shawn
@jbartus main challenge is when do we know when the arguments to a /giphy command ever end i could just go on and keep typing and make it very difficult to figure out what we should be searching for.
@shawn two possible methods.
I’m a fan of #2 personally
@shawn I change my vote from leave it as is to #2 above. (And allow it after an @ mention)
/giphy gloryhole
/giphy NSFW
/giphy bacon
/giphy toast
/me wonders when /me will work
@thismyusername Beat me to it. Also, will we be getting s/foo/bar commands for quick post fixes?
/giphy dave
/giphy lmao
@mfladd
OMG, @dave ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ that is not my fault!
/giphy meh
/giphy snapster
Huh, nothing?
/giphy rutledge
@jqubed it’s all about the search terms.
/giphy breakfast octopus
/giphy irk
/giphy drunk
/giphy sober
/giphy shawn
/giphy mfladd
Aw, poor @mfladd, how do you not have any GIF presence? You’re so prolific!
@jbartus bitch!
(but in a good way)
And Lord knows what that gif would be. Most likely not good.
@mfladd don’t tempt me to come up with ideas… @medz isn’t the only one who can make GIFs.
/giphy m fladd
/giphy garage sale
/giphy moose
/giphy ohnoyoudidnt
/giphy chad
/giphy martini
Not close to what I was expecting. Boo!
/giphy boo
Was hoping for Princess Bride
/giphy Princess Bride
@SSteve all you have to do is keep editing and save and it will keep changing before time runs out to what you like. Or, delete and try again.
Better
@mfladd Thanks but too much work.
/giphy goat
From all of us at the farm - welcome to June, @Dashcloud.
@mfladd
31 days in May, buddy!
@jbartus I know, I am being proactive - such as warnings.
Meeeeeeeeeeeh!
/giphy father
/giphy father Star Wars
/giphy father Luke
/giphy father darth
/giphy father Vader
/giphy goodnight moon
@mfladd
/giphy I’m having fun ! This is pretty cool.
Testing a couple previous order numbers.
/giphy full-fluid-pleasure
/giphy bright-ample-locket
Nope, nothing.
/giphy full fluid pleasure
/giphy bright ample locket
Without the dashes.
/giphy start the image flooding
/giphy thank you
/giphy giphy
/giphy greatest. site. ever.
@MrGlass
/giphy giggity
Aww, didn’t work
/giphy awesome
So it only works at the start? I generally like to make a comment and then use giphy as punctuation, but I guess that wont work.
/giphy punctuation
@MrGlass nope. phase 2 I guess.
/giphy can’t wait
@mfladd
/giphy Alison Brie
figured I had to give it a shot
@wilstev not disappointed
@wilstev oh shit, she deserves a reboot.
/giphy Alison Brie
Wait, is this going to be part of mehdown? Because that would be totally enough reason to switch.
@MrGlass yes, source code is all there in Mehdown.
/shrug
¯\_(ツ)_/¯/giphy shrug
@MrGlass
/giphy testy mcgee
/giphy test mctesterton
/giphy hot balls
/giphy Balls!
/giphy this is fun
/giphy hella fun
/giphy morning
/giphy conan the librarian
@conandlibrarian Having the @ tag first breaks it
/giphy mr. glass
@MrGlass
I was hoping for a Samuel L. Jackson Gif
@conandlibrarian It worked!!
@conandlibrarian I was hoping for something like
but no luck there
@conandlibrarian @MrGlass it’s currently using the text from your entire post as a search string, not just the bit after /giphy
/giphy no way!
@Ignorant
/giphy fuck
/giphy where is the love
/giphy awk
/giphy something really offensive that will get me banned for life
/giphy /giphy
/giphy
/giphy '); DELETE FROM Customers WHERE username <> ‘awk’;–
/giphy
/giphy knives and speaker docks
/giphy aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
/giphy €|^{%{%<\€]€\£\£+]^>{>?{€.!!?>^*$/$:(=*{€
/giphy .
/giphy mic drop
/giphy cat shirt
/giphy cat shirts
/giphy narf cake
@mfladd What the fuck?!
@narfcake Exactly
@narfcake don’t blame me for a random gif generator!
/giphy mogul skiing
/giphy jare melz
@mfladd i hate you
@jaremelz I know. (but Boston doesn’t care)
cc: jbartus
/giphy I lost my shoe
@wilstev i see what you were trying to do there
/giphy ouch taint
@medz that’s a pretty nasty fall… did he come out of that okay?
@jbartus I’m going to say yes, but i have no idea.
@jbartus supposedly went to emergency, but did not fracture spine… friends comment. from the youtube on which the gif is taken, was “He’s fine. Walking talking…I mean at least as well as he could before”
/giphy beer thirty
/giphy tree fiddy
/me facepalms
/giphy drunk cat
The Internet is a magical place.
@shawn
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/the-internet-defined
/giphy something went terribly wrong
/giphy awesome
/giphy with fire hose mode enabled this thread likes to crash mobile safari.
/giphy fuck
/giphy good for a laugh
/giphy perfect loop
@Ignorant boo
/giphy Rick and Morty
/giphy bullshit
@mfladd that’s brilliant
/giphy cotton candy
Hey @shawn I am not sure if this is realted or not… but “linking” seems broken with youtube videos.
When I go to link a youtube to a phrase or word it just auto embeds.
Here is an example:
This is a youtube video right .
Here is what it looks like in the editor:
@thismyusername Thanks. I filed a bug report: https://github.com/mediocre/mehdown/issues/44
Today’s update is for @jbartus who said instead of only allowing commands to be at the start of a post we should:
@gio @brhfl @cengland0 @Ignorant agreed.
/giphy meh
@shawn
/giphy yay
@shawn WOoohoo
/giphy awesome
Also,
/giphy wonder if multiples work now
/giphy nice
/giphy good job
@shawn so there’s only one allowed per post?
@awk
/giphy I don’t think so
/giphy who knows
@awk nah. You just needed another line break between them.
/giphy thank you @Thumperchick
/giphy thumper chick
@shawn thanks for the shoutout, appreciated but not necessary, the implementation looks great and you included support for multiples too, that’s a twofer!
/giphy gracias amigo
Dare I try for three? If it works there will be a GIF both before and after this sentence…
/giphy experiment
Excellent! You were super modest, you changed a lot more than just the one formatting suggestion! This looks great and I bet it will be a lot more useful for people now! Rock on!
/giphy Alison Brie SFW
also
/giphy best gif ever
@wilstev it’s best to avoid NSFW searches.
Nobody tried this yet?
/giphy commands
/giphy giphy
/giphy slash commands
/giphy slash-commands
/giphy giggity giggity jackpot
/giphy not what I expected
I’m guessing this is covered somewhere or I’ve just forgotten, but there’s too much goddamned shit to read around here, so I’m gonna ask again. How do I keep the “/” and “giphy” from pulling up the popup?
@joelmw
/giphy what?
/giphy never mind
I had Slashcommand enabled, as suggested in this helpful post. Which, yaknow, someone could have prompted me to remember so I’m not
/giphy banging my head against the wall
here
@jbartus This was my confusion. I knew how to use Slashcommand, but not how to not do it, so that I could to the other thing.
/giphy You people are no goddamned help at all
@Thumperchick
/giphy early adopter
So this is basically the same thing that happened with that goddamned eggcorn extension. I was out there doing shit, just to see. Then I forgot. Then, I was
/giphy all fucked up
@Thumperchick I think I prefer the extension. It gives me choices. I like choices.
With the extension enabled, once I enter
\giphy, pretty much no matter what I do, I’m gonna get the popup. Like so:If I complete the word, hit enter, whatever, the command goes away and I get this:
I blame @dave. And of course, @dashcloud.
I enjoy eating your commands.
Locking this topic so we can continue in VMP Sneak Peek: Slash Commands (Part 2)