Spoiler Tags: The Right Way

[Zeke]

Hey all.  I've seen a couple different ways of posting spoilers on these forums, both with some disadvantages.  I thought I would post them here as an example for people, and offer my own (ideally, eventually standard) method.

Making the text way tiny:  You make the spoiler text super super tiny so you can't read it.  To see the text, you have to highlight, copy, and paste it into your address bar or a text file or you can quote that post.  You make the spoiler text super super tiny so you can't read it.  To see the text, you have to highlight, copy, and paste it into your address bar or a text file or you can quote that post.    This is the most annoying one, in my opinion.


Making the text black:  When the spoiler text is black, it becomes hard to read against the dark gray background of the forums, and you highlight the text to read it.  This method's ok, but if you're reading fast or you don't have good eye control, you can still end up accidentally reading spoilers you may not want to see.


Making the text gray:  By using hex code color you can turn the text into the exact shade of the forum background, making it invisible or close enough as to make no difference.  The hex code for our shade of gray is #252525.  This way, you have to actively highlight the text to see it at all, and you can additionally preface the spoiler with red text to indicate its presence.  Spoiler:  You can't see meeeeee.

Code: [Select]

[size=1pt]It puts the spoiler in the brackets or it gets the hose again.[/size]

[color=red]Spoiler:[/color][color=#252525]I'm invisible![/color]

[color=black]Insert witty spoiler comment here.[/color]

Although honestly, this would all be a lot easier if we just traded in that useless "Insert Flash" button nobody ever uses for an "Insert Spoiler" box sort of deal.

[Xiagan]

Although honestly, this would all be a lot easier if we just traded in that useless "Insert Flash" button nobody ever uses for an "Insert Spoiler" box sort of deal.

Yeah, that'd be fine.
I used the grey-method from time to time, but it was too much work because I wasn't able to remember the #252525 . Besides that, it is ofc the best way.

[Chibi]

Thanks Zeke - I was wondering about that for the longest time. 

[inkblob]

on a forum I manage I added a spoiler tag that acts like a blockout. it's like a black highliter with black text ( actually dark green in this case ) and you have to select the text to see it. spoiler tags are simply [spoiler]Snape did it[/spoiler]

here's the php for it, though it won't necessarily work on this forum, it's for phpbb2 and these are for the bbcode.php and bbcode.tpl files

Code: [Select]

// [spoiler] and [/spoiler] for marking possible spoilers
$text = str_replace("[spoiler:$uid]", $bbcode_tpl['spoiler_open'], $text);
$text = str_replace("[/spoiler:$uid]", $bbcode_tpl['spoiler_close'], $text);

// [spoiler] and [/spoiler] for marking possible spoilers
$text = preg_replace("#\[spoiler\](.*?)\[/spoiler\]#si", "[spoiler:$uid]\\1[/spoiler:$uid]", $text);

<!-- BEGIN spoiler_open --><span style="color:#009900; background-color:#009900"><!-- END spoiler_open -->