About the BBCode Viewer
Sometimes the markup arrives without the board around it: an export file, a moderation log, a support ticket that quotes somebody else, or a message pasted into chat by a member who copied the source instead of the text. Reading those brackets by eye is slow and easy to get wrong, particularly when quotes are nested three deep.
Drop the raw text in and the right pane shows the post itself. The Forum theme borrows the pale background and boxed post of a traditional board, Plain light suits a screenshot for documentation, and Dark is easier on the eyes when you are working through a long moderation queue at night. The rendered page is displayed inside a sandboxed frame, so an image URL in a post cannot run scripts against this site.
Malformed markup is counted rather than hidden. The status line reports how many tags were rendered and how many were malformed, meaning a closing tag with no opener or an opener that was never closed, which usually explains why the original post looked broken to its readers. Links are given rel="nofollow" and open in a new tab, so a viewer never becomes a redirect for spam. If you need the underlying markup rather than the picture, run the same text through BBCode to HTML, and use the BBCode Editor when you are writing rather than reading.
How to use
- Paste the raw post, brackets and all, into the input pane.
- Pick a Theme: Forum for a realistic board look, or Dark for long reading sessions.
- Read the status line for a malformed tag count if the post renders oddly.
- Use Download to keep a self contained HTML copy of the rendered post.
Common questions
- Do images in the post actually load?
- Yes, if the URL is reachable and the host allows hotlinking. The frame is sandboxed, so a broken or hostile image affects nothing outside the preview.
- Why do some tags show as literal brackets?
- They are tags this viewer does not implement, usually board specific ones like media embeds. Switch the unknown tag option to Remove to hide them.
- Can I view a whole thread at once?
- Yes. Paste several posts one after another, separated by blank lines, and each renders in order in the same page.
- Does the viewer change the post in any way?
- Only in presentation. The text is escaped, link targets are restricted and nothing is rewritten, so what you read is what was written.