When a code snippet is long enough to prompt scrolling (especially horizontal scrolling), it would be helpful to offer a link to view the code snippet in a new window.
I'm thinking that the link should be positioned below the snippet, since most people will decide to use it after scanning the part of the snippet that is visible without scrolling.
I have a strong dislike of the scrollbars-within-scrollbars that code snippets introduce. I do tend to edit my samples to avoid it, which I guess is part of the desired behaviour Jeff is going for. I know in the past Jeff has said that snippets should be short, but sometimes a bit of verbosity is unavoidable.
I'm not sure I would want a new window, but perhaps some CSS-based truncation and JavaScript expansion would be in order. Or perhaps some font scaling code, if such a thing is deemed practical.
This would be a godsend for Objective-C posts. Every time I have to come here for a Cocoa development question, I end up having to copy the code into an editor that I can stretch out thanks to the ridiculously long method signatures.
You try distinguishing - (void)controller:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller didChangeSection:(id <NSFetchedResultsSectionInfo>)sectionInfo atIndex:(NSUInteger)sectionIndex forChangeType:(NSFetchedResultsChangeType)type { from - (void)controller:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller didChangeObject:(id)anObject atIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath forChangeType:(NSFetchedResultsChangeType)type newIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)newIndexPath { (taken from the code I'm looking at right now) on a slim window with horizontal scrolling and tell me if your eyes aren't bleeding by the end of the day. Sure people could break up the lines when they post. But they don't!
So, Stack Overflow: Please please please do this for the sake of all us Mac developers!
If you're interested, I built a greasemonkey script that helps solve this problem by allowing you to click the code region and have it expand to show all the code at once.
This is more of a brainstormy "what if" type suggestion. What if SO had some kind of pastebin that was integrated with the site? Or if that wasn't possible, why not instead offer some kind of integration with pastebin or maybe even github's gists?
Here is an idea: we could use something like etherpad to post code snippets, that way someone could actually edit the code and save a revision, then link to the revision with their answer. That way you could see all the possible answers for your question via revision
For example: http://beta.etherpad.org/p/r.RcW61c4F4f7MdcKa
The advantage over pastebin is that Etherpad is real time so updates can be seen / discussed instantly.
My opinion is that long (or numerous) code blocks (and/or images) should be discouraged while asking and editing questions, in much the same way duplicate questions are discouraged.
If the user continues to post the question with ridiculously long/numerous code blocks or images, despite the warning, then they should be hidden and replaced with "show/hide" links that, of course, shows or hides each block in its entirety (or maybe all blocks with just one link if there are too many). It would also be nice if these links were available on anything longer than maybe 3 lines, or maybe even every block, but not automatically collapsed.
Not only will this make it easier for those reading the question to show only the information they need to come up with an answer, but it also provides further discouragement to the user who asked the question, because now the people who might usually answer are less likely to spend time on a bloated question. They see that certain parts are already collapsed, which they will soon learn is usually bad news.
I mean, look at this mess:
How to handle custom Java exception in Flex app
This is just awful. Now, maybe all of that is necessary, I don't know (I doubt it). But if those were all collapsed, you could take one look and know without scrolling that there is probably too much information being presented here.
