PBWikiBugReports

One of many products/services that I've written BugReports (see that should have automatically been made into a wiki link, but no, because of one of many PBWiki 2.0 regressions from 1.0, links have to always be explicitly created with a more complicated UI that takes more steps) about.

I can no longer recommend PBWiki as of 2009-03-08 because:

1. The downgrade to PBWiki 2.0 was forced upon users as of 2009-03-09 - an example of how NOT to treat users of your service.
2. PBWiki 2.0 does not work on mobile devices (supposedly there is a "mobile site" version for premium users, but any decent web dev/designer should be able to make sites at least *display* reasonably on iPhones/BlackBerries if not *edit*.
3. As a result I don't trust PBWiki to not screw over users of their service in the future. I will be exploring various alternatives (including building my own super-simple wiki site/service).

Specific bugs:

• PBWiki 2.0 regressions from 1.0 (see related UpgradesToAvoid)
  • 2008-04-09 as twittered ACCESSKEYs no longer work:
    • accesskey S is no longer supported to Save a page being edited.
    • accesskey P is no longer supported to Preview a page being edited.
    • accesskey C is no longer supported to Cancel a page being edited.
  • 2009-03-08 IDs for headings are no longer automatically created, thus making it take MORE STEPS to create permalinkable headings.
  • 2009-03-08 IDs for existing headings (that were created with PBWiki 1.0) are LOST (DATALOSS PERMALINKLOSS) when edited with the PBWiki 2.0 editor.  This makes me not want to edit any of my wiki pages because doing so means I will break permalinks unless I spend the time to recreate by hand all the ids on all the headings on the page.
  • 2009-03-08 No "Preview" function? WTF. And no - the "WYSIWYG" editor is not trustworthy nor capable enough, e.g. if you edit in Source mode instead - where's the preview?
  • 2009-03-08 No auto-wiki-link creation of WikiWords. This basically makes PBWiki into more like a poor version of Google Docs, and less like a wiki service.
  • 2009-03-09 cmd-` is "eaten" by the (WYSIWYG in particular) editor and does nothing. EXPECTED BEHAVIOR: Let the browser application cycle through windows.
• 2009-03-08 The WYSIWYG editor just plain sucks. Not sure how else to put it. Try splitting a list in half and putting a heading in the middle for example. Was easy with the old text-based wiki markup - now impossible with the lame WYSIWYG interface.  Only thing the WYSIWYG  editor is good for is making small text edits like fixing typos.
• 2009-03-08 web version displays poorly on a BlackBerry Bold
• 2009-03-08 web versions editing fails on a BlackBerry Bold
• 2009-03-08 "Source" editing area too small - uses a very small fraction of a 1024x768 browser window

PBWiki 1.0 bugs

For reference:

• Cannot edit from BlackBerry
  • no login/edit links provided (on both BlackBerry 8700 and 9000)
  • edit workaround (append "?edit=1" to page URL) fails when saving due to supposedly some other user (same as you) has edit lock (on BlackBerry 8700)
  • BlackBerry 9000 workaround: set browser Options / Browser Configuration / Browser Identification: to Firefox.

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