This is old. By Internet standards, this is really, really old. It's about as old as dirt. It's older than Garden Web. It's probably only still around because it is quite good, and most of the commands haven't changed. Everything I've wanted to do in HTML is in there, somewhere, though a table of shadow boxes almost drove me crazy once.

Here is a link that might be useful: HTML Tutorial

Nice work Claire, I think this is a good idea and well done! Here are a few suggestions:

I'd leave out the font size info, because nobody really wants to read posts written that way and nobody really needs to write that way either. Bold and italic seem like reasonable styles to include, but are the rest really going to enhance the GW experience?

Second, the main questions I've seen on the forums are about posting photos, from people who don't have access to a server. The best advice for those people is to upload photos to the gallery - say, on the perennials forum, where you can post a photo by uploading it from your computer. You can then add a link to your photo, or embed it in your post, on this forum, using the url of the image on the perennials gallery. Not sure if that's covered in the Hot Peppers forum link...

The most important photo posting advice is about size control. New people have a hard time realizing how difficult it is to read a post (never mind downloading it before you read it, if you have dialup) when there's an oversized photo in it. I'd suggest adding some recommendations on size - i.e., max 450 pixels wide, how to make a small image out of a large one, and as a last resort, how to scale an image within your post by adding the "size" parameter to the img tag.

Last, when you are composing a post, there is no "Optional Link URL" form; you might tell people that they will find that after they hit the preview button.

My 2 cents, always freely available! Thanks for doing this, I think it will be useful to lots of people.

Cheers - Nan

mad_gallica:

Thanks for the tutorial link.

I've found several others, one nice one is
HTML Code Tutorial

I can't link to them on the FAQ, it's Garden Web policy not to allow links that are likely to change. I'm hoping they'll allow me to link to sites within the Garden Web site just for informational purposes.

Nan:

You make a good point about font size - if no-one objects I'll delete that part.

I was hoping not to go deeply into inserting photos. The Hot Peppers FAQ states a reason not to use GW galleries to upload photos, i.e.

Option 4: Use the GardenWeb galleries available on other forums.
You can post images to other GardenWeb forum galleries, but these images are not stored for long, so this is not always the best option. For example, your posted message on Hot Peppers forum may stick around for a couple of months, but the image on the Garden Photo Gallery may disappear after two weeks so youre left with a "broken" image link in your forum message.

Thanks both for commenting. I'll wait for others before revising the draft.

Claire

Hi Claire...

Good timing. I have been wanting to figure this out recently and didn't have the time to research it for myself. Thanks for doing this and for putting everything I need to know all in one place. I can't comment on the content as I haven't read the whole thing yet. This is very nice of you to do.

You sound so efficient! I hope your family appreciates you.

:-)
pm2

pm2:

I wasn't going through that list of tasks I'd done just to show how efficient I am.

My point (not well made) was that I'd run out of excuses to avoid writing this FAQ! I've been thinking about it for a couple of years, and gathering information here and there.

I posted on the "projects I never got around to doing..." thread to force myself to do it. When I'm close to starting something, I go through a flurry of housekeeping type tasks first just to postpone action. When I get to the point of cleaning the house (a task I really dislike), I usually give up and start my project. Once I've started, I get into it and don't want to stop.

I've done this enough times in my life that I now laugh at myself when I suddenly start cleaning.

Claire

Claire, I WISH...I could procastinate the way you do!! lol
Most people procastinate by avoiding work. You get more done when you are procastinating then most people when they are not.

Seriously though. I really admire your energetic, productive ways, even if the motivation is to avoid something else. I didn't see that post about the 'projects never get around to doing'. I saw the title, but I wouldn't even read it because I didn't want to find out how long my list would be. [g]

Thanks very much for creating this post instead of cleaning your house. You really did help me if that makes you feel any better.

:-)

Claire, I just started reading the post and trying out the instructions. I tried copy/pasting your 'tagged' sentences into the message window on this thread and hitting preview message, but the preview just shows the same typed sentence and not the effect wanted.

For instance...I pasted from your post:

This is 14pt type.

And this is the result.

Am I doing something wrong? I was expecting the sentence to show up as 'This is 14pt type.' in larger letters.

Thanks :-)

It's because you have a space after the

pm2:

I was off getting my car serviced so I didn't see your post until now.

Nan is correct, you need to take out the spaces after . I have to make this clearer when I revise the draft.

If the spaces weren't there, then I couldn't show this command without the tags disappearing and the type getting large. The alternative was to keep saying something like "type the command and then surround it with ", which I thought would be more confusing.

...................................................................................................................
Maybe I should change it to:

This is 14pt type. Note, take out the spaces after and you'll get
This is 14pt type.

Did you try it again? Don't get discouraged! Once you get it the first time, the rest is easy.

It's good you're sharing your problems with the FAQ; that way I can get some of the bugs out.

Thanks,
Claire

This is 14pt type.

Thanks for the help both of you. :-)
I was away from my computer all afternoon. So I did as you suggested, by copy/pasting what was in your post again, but this time taking out the spaces, and this is my result. Of course I didn't want the /font to show up...so I am trying it again, as I think I see another space right before the forward slash... and this is the second try taking out the other space....

This is 14pt type.

Ooops! Now what happened, it is all 14 pt type?

LOL

OK, now my try at turning the font red.

red

Nothing. I took out all the spaces except between font and color. Hmmm...

:-)

This is 14pt type.

Another try after I noticed that you mention needing a double forward slash with font at the end in order to end a command. See if that works.

Aha! I think I have it now! At least for the font size. I don't have time this minute, but I will come back and work on it some more and try all the other commands and putting them together.

Thanks for the help.
:-)

Congratulations!

The red worked perfectly. The problem with the font size is you didn't turn it off correctly by taking out the space between Try the font size again.

Claire

You figured it out and posted before I could answer.

Well done!

Claire

Claire and cady are great teachers!

I'll have a blue Christmas without you.

Tiny Pic

{{gwi:191092}}

Wow, give her a little information and she goes berserk!

And that's a very funny collection of outraged babies - how DARE you put these ugly hats on our heads!

Claire

I've been thinking about trying that tiny pic site - it was recommended by an architect on the Building a Home Forum.

So I seem to have been able to do all that I wanted to know how to do. Now for some comments...

I like knowing how to change the font, but I agree, I would use it rarely. What I find myself wishing I could do on a fairly regular basis, is putting something in italics, underlining a book title, putting a word in bold.

As for the color, something else I would rarely go to the trouble of using, but again, I would like to know how to for that rare occasion when I might. Such as in a Christmas greetings thread or something like that. Most of the time I would not take the time to do that. As a matter of fact, I use the firefox browser and if you notice when I tried to use the color tags, I thought it didn't work. That is because firefox limits html commands when using their browser and I didn't see any red words. I realized that you did and I went and used Internet Explorer and sure enough, I saw the word red in red ink. Strangely, I didn't see the other effects. That was confusing and I have no idea why. BUT, in the browser that I use every day, the commands I wanted to use work fine with the directions you gave me. So I am all set.

The thing I wanted most to do and will probably use more frequently than the others, is posting a photo inside the post. I used to use Tinypic, but at some point something changed and I was pasting the command they were providing and it still wasn't working. So these directions worked for me. I compared the command you were suggesting to the command Tinypic provided and they were different. But I think I would still use the Tinypic site to upload the photo and then just change the command where needed.

Finally, on Nan's concern about resizing the photos. I assume that the concern is the time it takes to open a thread for someone on dial up when one of the photos is oversized. So the photo I posted above, is oversized?

If that is a problem, I will go back and review the directions for resizing.

Hope that helps. :-)

Thanks for the comments. That's what I need for the next round when I revise the draft and re-post.

The issue of resizing photos has two aspects; firstly the time it takes to download, and secondly the width of the photo so it may exceed the width of the screen, causing you to have to scroll right and left to read the following text.

I use dialup, and your photo downloaded pretty quickly. However, it is too wide in that I can't see it all in one screen view, and it causes all of the following posts to also be too wide.

I've been thinking about adding another useful command to the FAQ; i.e. which makes an early line break.

You use it to shorten a line. For example, this line will probably run out of the view screen if I let it run on and on, but if I throw in a judicious or two

You use it to shorten a line. For example, this line will probably run out
of the view screen if I let it run on and on, but if I throw
in a judicious or two

you can correct the oversizing of the text. It's a PIA to do though.

Claire

The photo I posted was very fast for me and the thread didn't slow down loading because I have high speed access, right? On my screen, it has at least an inch border on the left and about 2.5 inches on the right side. What causes it to be too wide for you but not for me? Well, I am sure I saw some directions for reducing the size somewhere today. I will have to work on that.

Thanks Claire, cady and DtD... :-)

A good rule of thumb for images is 450 pixels wide; PM2, your Anne Geddes image is 1024 px. I can't really read this thread now, because it requires scrolling left and right.
If your monitor is displaying the whole image and not making the posts widen out beyond the size of your browser window, it is either because you have a very high resolution monitor or your browser is resizing the image. Right clicking on the image and scrolling down to "properties" will tell you the image details.

You can (probably) replace the image on tinypix with a smaller one, and that will fix the problem. Otherwise, I think we might need a new thread!

Cheers - DtD

On the new IE7, there is a place at the lower right corner where you can zoom in or out or change the size of the page to preset %s of 400, 200, 150, 125, 100, 75 or 50 and a custom zoom you can use to get different sizes in between.

I find this most useful in forums with imbedded pictures and/or a wide left margin. 90% seems to work best for me.

Marie

Marie:

That sounds like a very useful function for Internet Explorer users. I wish that my browser, Safari, had something similar.

Claire