How to make a great Instructable

Step 13 How to deal with web forms and online systems

When entering data into a text box or form on a website, there is always the chance that text may be lost. The website may go down before you click a "save" or "send" button or you may lose your connection to the internet. Losing something you just wrote can be extremely frustrating and annoying.

The Instructables website is no exception. Occasionally we experience errors that result in steps not being saved or comments not being posted. Often you can go back through your history by hitting the back button on your browser and try resubmitting. Try hitting the back button once until you see the spinning "loading" image, and then click the refresh button. For comments, click "Add comment" again, and your text may already be in the form. For Instructables, your text may already be visible.

The best way to prevent this problem is to type your text into a local text editing program and copy it into the web forms. If there is an error saving, nothing is lost and you can copy your text into the form again. Another method is to copy the text typed into a form into your system's copy buffer (typically CTRL-A to select all, and CTRL-C to copy) right before you click save or submit. Should anything go wrong, you can paste your text and try again.