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druvans,

you might try to change your code in something like:

$text = preg_replace("#\[x\](.*?)\[/x\]#", imagize($1), $text);

but I'm not sure, whether it works out for you. I have never used a function inside a preg_replace(), so I really don't know about it. If this doesn't work you might choose an iterative approach replacing one email address after the other. A third variant would be to apply your differently modified $text to the eval() function.

There is at least one more source for trouble in your imagize() function, that I found at a first glance. You use only the first part of the email address to determine the filename, so if you have two people with info@domain1.com and info@domain2.com they both will show up with the info.png image which serves for domain2.com.

What about something like:

New Topic: /forum/forum-ID/new
New Post: /topic/topic-ID/new

although my favorite would be URIs like

/forum/punbb_discussions/2             for page 2 of forum punbb_discussions
/forum/punbb_discussions/new           for a new topic in forum punbb_discussions
/forum/punbb_discussions/t6254         for topic 6254
/forum/punbb_discussions/t6254/2       for page 2 of topic 6254
/forum/punbb_discussions/t6254/new     for a reply to topic 6254
/forum/punbb_discussions/t6254/p36091  for post 36091 on topic 6254

Thank you Rickard, this will help me a lot.

Rickard:

I just searched with Google for "regex debug". Is this something, that might be useful?

http://www.esperan.com/regex.html

Greetings

Firefox since the 0.9 days, now 1.0.

IE is a nuisance, Opera not more than a short try. However, I have to use both of them for web developing.

@ analogue

You're right, there might be a little disadvantage for the advanced user who insists in the freedom of choice where to open a link if a "_blank" link is used. If you want to open it in the same window, you can still do it, just right click the link and choose copy link adress, then paste it into the location bar.

What we need to do is to weight the advantages and disadvantages of normal and "_blank" links in relation to the likings and expectations of our users.

I consider myself an advanced user, I know about right clicks to open links in new windows or new tabs. Given the experience I made with most websites, I become accustomed to having a link leaving a website open in a new window. And you know what? I like it because it makes perfect sense to me. But as this is just my opinion we should not overweight it.

If I look at my forum (and yes, the following numbers are just a qualified guess), I would estimate that 70% don't know of the right click option, from the rest 70% never use it because of the extra click needed, and from the remaining rest 70% (like me) just don't want the external link open in the same window. So we have 2.7% of the users who - like you - insist in the choice to open external links in the same window. And we have 97.3% of the users, who would in one way or the other be bothered with unwanted or at least unexpected behaviour or having to make an extra click.

As you (and 2.7% of my visitors) still have the choice to open a "_blank" link in the same window, as I mentioned in the beginning, I will put this burden on your shoulders to save the other 97.3% from a negative experience in my forum. This doesn't mean that this needs to be the standard behaviour of PunBB but it shows my experience with my forum (which is not PunBB yet).

I understand Rickards point of staying xhtml compliant, so I will use a javascript solution like

<a href="http://domain.tld/path/to/file.php" onClick="return newwindow(this)">Linktext</a>

to have a solution that works fine even if javascript is disabled. function newwindow() needs to be included somewhere and "return false".

Hope this might calm down the emotions a little bit.

Thank you Rickard for your quick reply.

The described behaviour with search ID URLs particularly irritates me, because I value URLs much more than most web developers do. In my forum /forum/search.php?action=show_user&user_id=2 would be rewritten to /forum/user/2 or even better /forum/user/spider8, just to make the URL meaningfull as it is now with my current (custom made) software. An arbitrary search ID will inevitably lead to confusion. E.g. users will post these kind of URLs in their posts to help each other on how to find posts of another user etc.

In the case of user posts, the above mentioned URL forum/search.php?action=show_user&user_id=2 is not the result of POST data, so a redirection would not be neccessary. And for the caching benefit: What about deploying a cookie with the search ID? When the second page of the result set is requested the valid search ID can lead to the cached query results, interpreting the search ID if one is found and still valid, otherwise deleting invalid search IDs from the cookies and performing the search once more.

This method could also be used for POST data based searches, thus a redirect to itself (something like /forum/search) to avoid the annoying popup could do the trick. If the search ID is not valid anymore, a search form could be presented.

I understand, that my insisting in meaningful URLs sounds a bit strange to many people, but my members enjoy using these URLs, as they are selfexplaining. I also made the observation, that Google honours these URLs extremely well, my forum with about 1.000.000 posts ist indexed by Google with about 80% of its content.