h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Any of you people realised that the :42: emoticon of Facebook just doesn't work anymore ? Why is that ?

Just out of curiosity, what did it do? Because I had no idea it existed...

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I never knew Fb had *any* emoticons.

TRiG.

What's Facebook?

Good morning Oolon, welcome to h2g2. Take no notice of the rudeness of some of the above replies. Some here like to perpetuate the myth that newcomers are unwelcome. The truth of the matter is that we are delighted to have new people posting.


(reminds Icy that he and I are 'friends' on Facebook)

h2g2 is proud that we have some of the best smileys - we certainly do seem to have a smiley for most occasions.

I didn't realise that the 42 smiley had vanished from Facebook. At least we still have the and here...





ps You will get an official welcome soon on your personal space, Oolon, from one of our volunteers.

Is this thing on?

Hello?

I wasn't being unwelcoming or rude, I didn't know Facebook had a :42: emoticon, and I had no idea what it did.

And I still don't. Does ANYONE know? (Let's leave aside the matter of whether anyone should care, shall we? Just tell me what it did, eh?)

As far as I can remember, it turned :42: to a red box with 42 in white numbers.

I thought it was a nice wink at the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (in all its incarnations) and to the fans of it. But perhaps very few fb users actually used it, so they decided to take it away?

I have to admit I rarely use FaceBook, and I too didn't know they had emoticons.

From a techy perspective I can see why they might have got rid of it. With emoticons you either render them when you post, or when you display. Each has its own good and bad points.

If you render when you post, putting the images in at that point, it means that the pages display quicker, but that you can't retroactively add smilies. If you render when you display, it takes a little longer to get each page ready, but it does mean that if you change what smilies you have as you go forward, then all the older posts can suddenly have smilies in them ( our winekey smiley is a classic example of that ) and any that you retire just show the code or text rather than a broken image link.

I think we've probably got the most smilies of any site but rather bizarrely for the person who's responsible for the code I don't know if we have a 42 smiley ourselves!

No, not yet.

Maybe people who appreciate the 42 emoticon don't use facebook all that much.
Maybe it would be fitting to "move" it over here.
Maybe if they take umbrage with that the attention would garner us some interesting attention from facebook users? If done right, that is. How to do it "right"?

We really should have a 42 emoticon, what a glaring omission.

Mind you, I think that there might have been talk about it before, I'll go and ask the Artists

Hi Oolon,

I am your ACE, a meeter and greeter to all who join h2g2.com - Yes, even Alfster got one!

I have left you a message in your personal space which should help you find your way around our site, although you seem to have done very well so far

As for the missing 42 emoticon in facebook, I too didn't realise there was one


lil xx

sort of off topic, or topic drift... but just took a look at FB, and at the top of my page is a link to 'trending articles'' which is
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/42-the-answer-to-life-the-universe-and-everything-2205734.html

Today's Independent story: 42: The answer.....

That's an old article - no idea why it should be trending now.

There was an interesting radio interview with John Loyd the other week. He claimed that DNA had thought of a 'real' answer to life the universe and everything, but he died before he could tell his friends.

I remember the 42 smiley, it was put on there in honour of DNA's 60th Birthday. Iirc, it was a 'limited edition' type of thing. It was hootooers that pointed it out to me.

Yeah,I (kind of) thought that too,but it's not all the (or most of the) smileys are gone,it is just :42: If we take this as a list,for example "https://www.facebook.com/pages/How-to-make-chat-symbols/177737490684?sk=info",everything on this list works,except the 42 one. (Believe me,I have tried :D) So this makes me think that whatever it is, it's done in purpose. (Or maybe I'm a bit paranoid ? :D)

You're back!