BB Tips & Tricks: Inserting URL links, bold text, etc.

[DEZadmin]

If you're wondering how to make text bold or italic, or how to insert a URL link to a profoundly useful site, such as this, you're in the right place.

A disclaimer: due to inherent limitations with web page technology, these types of functions will never be as simple as using MS Word. You will be making use of vB Code, which is analagous to HTML, but developed strictly for the limited needs of text formatting. There are two ways of using vB Code:

(1) When composing your message, you can click the little toolbar icons that look similar to MS Word toolbar icons. For instance, if you want to make some text bold, first select the text you want to bold, then click the "B" (for bold), and the vB code for bold will be inserted in your message. Italic, underline, left/right/center, indent & list work the same way. For a URL link, click the "earth & chainlink" icon, and follow the bouncing ball. The e-mail link icon (note & envelope) works similarly.

(2) If your Geek Society dues are all paid up, you can just type the vB code in yourself. This gives you tremendous flexibility, but it takes some practice, and isn't for everyone. Here is a vB Code reference; scroll down a bit to see examples of all the available codes, and how to use them. Of course, you could also use the toolbar icons to generate code and then modify that code.

Please note: once you've inserted vB code, be careful to not delete or modify it, unless you know what you're doing. Accidentally deleting part of the code can make your whole post look weird.

If you have any specific questions regarding the use of vB Code, feel free to e-mail me, or post a new thread in this forum.

[Rebecca Petris]

Bumping to the top...

Re inserting hyperlinks - to expand on this, here is how I do it:

FIRST, I usually open a 2nd browser window, go to the thing I want to link to, and copy the URL to the clipboard.

THEN, in my first browser where I'm making my bulletin board post, I click on the hyperlink button (the little earth + chain link thingy right after the bullet point icon).

Then I type in the text I want to appear, click OK, then I paste in the URL, then click OK again.

It's a bit of a pain (I wish it had a way to simply navigate to the URL you want to link to) but it does make nice links without adding a bunch of gunk to the screen.

[Flick]

Another tip that has saved me a lot of time is changing my User Settings so that the most recent post of a thread is on the top, not the bottom. Before I would have to scroll all the way down the long threads. Maybe everybody knows this already but I just discovered it a while ago.

[Lucy]

I wonder if the Almighty does/remembers DOS. Just curious if ya remember this. You're probably just on the young side of not needing it. This is a friendly post.

[DEZadmin]

(Sorry, didn't notice this post before)

My father, a computer programmer at Boeing, bought an Apple ][ computer in 1977, when I was but a lad. He taught any of the kids who wanted to learn how to use it and program it. What you know as DOS (MS-DOS) didn't come along until 1981.

So to answer your question, yes, I remember DOS. And embedding the formatting codes (similar to above) in word processing files, hoping it would print out correctly on the dot-matrix printer. I sure don't miss those days . . .