Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the 'Extended' Section you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the 'Extended' Section this week is a discussion of
Fancy Formatting using The Daily Kos (dKos) interface.
After that you can ask me any question you want. I don't know all the answers so if you stump me, you do. I invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct (or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today, have all my friends been good at play?
I can see gimmeshelter (#111275) and walja (#111984), the first and last users to join the week of 11/10/06 to 11/16/06, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
Hello Devil. Welcome to Hell.
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Fancy Formatting
Hooray for New Math!
New-hoo-hoo-math.
It won't do you a bit of good to review math.
It's so simple,
So very simple,
That only a child can do it! |
-- Tom Lerher |
I don't think we'll get to fractions tonight, but I would like to talk a bit about math in base eight.
Now the truth of the matter is that you don't need much more than peeder's fancy buttons to look like an adult in this pool and most of the grownups don't show off as much as they might.
Let's review our formatting commands from last week's Welcome New Users-
Bold, Italic, and Blockquote
'Bold', 'Italic', and 'Blockquote' all work basically the same way. You highlight the text that you wish to apply the effect to and push the button.
- This text is in bold.
- This text is italicized.
This is a blockquote and you can put Bold Italic text in your blockquote by just pushing the buttons.
(
Please note- you can nest <blockquote>s.)
When I talked about that, I didn't mention the extra text that shows up in the 'Comment Posting Window' on the outside of the text you've highlighted-
- <strong></strong> == Bold
- <em></em> == Italic
- <blockquote></blockquote> == Blockquote (surprise!)
These are HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Tags or Codes for determining how your text appears. Before you get all technical on me, I know they do other things too. Don't just start cutting and pasting them though because they don't all work.
Gee ek why don't they all work?
Because they do other things, some of which are highly subversive.
All of this is controlled at the server side (Markos and his computers) and changes, occasionally very quickly. The 'Comment Posting Window' actually lives on your machine and, because peeder doesn't (and doesn't want to) fuss with it all the time, accepts a very broad range of HTML. I want to stress-
- 'Preview is your friend.'
- Not everything that works in 'Preview' works on dKos.
Fortunately everything I'm going to talk about here works, or at least it did the last time I tried it.
Fussing with your font
As a general rule, HTML Tags are enclosed in angle brackets '<>' and there are 2 Tags, On and Off. If there is an Off Tag please use it, otherwise your Comment or Diary is likely to get rejected by the server. The Off Tag is usually exactly the same as the On Tag but adds a '/' (slash) before the Tag name. This explains the many cryptic Comments you see like </jk> (end joke) and </snark> (end snark). I note once more for the record that I never, ever use the </snark> Tag.
It's easier with examples. Forget about <strong> and </strong>, and <em> and </em> (at least until we get to diary editing). Too many characters and too confusing.
- <b> </b> <b>Bold</b> == Bold
- <i> </i> <i>Italic</i> == Italic
For some things there is no substitute, without peeder's magic buttons <blockquote></blockquote> still == Blockquote.
Blockquote (surprise!)
There are some exciting extra things you can do with HTML that you can't do with buttons though, like this-
- <u> </u> <u>Underline</u> == Underline
- <s> </s> <s>Strikethrough</s> ==
Strikethrough - <tt> </tt> <tt>Monospace</tt> == Monospace (comes from TeleTypewriter, an extremely primitive output device)
<b><i><u><s><tt>And you can use them all at the same time just like this!</tt></s></u></i></b>
And you can use them all at the same time just like this!
But it looks horrible.
Please note that you have to turn Off your Tags in reverse order. If the last thing you turned On was monospacing, it must be the first thing you turn Off.
Now I want to talk about Autoformat. Since HTML is kind of intimidating there is yet another way of indicating that you want a particular kind of special effect applied to your text. The Autoformat characters are odd characters which when used as a pair change the format.
- * * *Bold* == Bold
- / / /Italic/ == Italic
- _ _ _Italic_ == Italic (gotta think that was meant to be underline, but it 'Previews' this way now)
- - - -Strikethrough- ==
Strikethrough - = =
Monospace
== Monospace (not working at the moment, but trust me, it used to)
I am very lazy, but I always use the HTML Tags rather than the Autoformat characters because they always work. On other blogs they use different characters or the blog doesn't use Autoformat. Even here at dKos Autoformat doesn't work all the time and sometimes just when you think you've got the answer, they change the question. Did I mention how lazy I am?
Another HTML Tag I'd like to share is Super Scriiiipt!
- <sup> </sup> <sup>Superscript</sup> == Superscript (a (tm) trademark is still legally binding, your fancy typing tricks do not excuse you)
One thing that I do that some of the other gurus don't is try and give you 'cut and paste' code. The problem is how do you tell the computer "Show this, don't do this." '\' (backslash) is the literal character, the next character will be displayed, not acted on. By using it I can tell you ♥ is the ♥ special character instead of "type in & hearts; and suck out the space between the '&' and the 'h' but make sure to include the ';'". Yes, I am really that lazy.
Ordered and Unordered Lists (Comments only)
Let me explain Comments only. I am of the opinion that the Ordered and Unordered bullet points feature of Autoformat is not working in the 'New Diary Entry' Window. I have proven it to my satisfaction, but I have also found that the same techniques that solve the problem for Diaries can screw up the site when not properly applied in Comments. Since we don't have to talk about Diaries here yet, we won't, and instead we will focus only on Comments, where it works perfectly, better than Diaries even.
This is an example of an Ordered List-
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four (can I have a little more?)
Which is useful when you want to say things like "I have a four point plan!" and then prove that you do.
For those who are infirmer in their resolve or tend to wander (not that I'd know anyone like that) we have the Unordered List-
- Point
- Counterpoint
- Do you have a point?
Yes.
For an Ordered list you start a line with a number, any number, followed by a period '.' and a space. For an Unordered list you start a line with an asterisk '*' and a space (and by 'start a line' I mean push that big old 'Enter' button on your keyboard).
Now what makes Comment Ordered lists rule is the fact you can start them at any arbitrary number. I can't duplicate it in this Diary, but you can see an example of it here.
Linky Links
Gee ek, that was a neat link.
Well, it's really much funnier if you hit Parent a few times.
How do you do that? How can you be so self absorbed?
'Search' helps, but we're not talking about that yet, we're talking about linky links.
As I said week before last-
The next control (bottom of Comment, right) is the 'Time and Date Stamp'. Pushing on it takes you to a window where you see that Comment and all it's Replies isolated from the rest of the Diary.
Next we swipe it the same way we swipe
every URL we use. We go to the top of the browser where we have all that scary stuff that starts '
http://', highlight it, copy it to the Clipboard, and paste it in our dKos post.
Is it just that easy?
Yes, it's just that easy. And the 'Swipe-O-Matic 2000™' makes mighty fine apple sauce too.
Anything that starts with that magic http:// is a link.
So just pasting in the URL is A OK, dKos will even trim it for you. One reason why this is a good way to do links is that your source is visible (well, if it's small enough) to everyone so they can see if they want to click the link. You can also see the destination of a link in the 'Status Bar' of your browser down at the very bottom when you point at a link without clicking.
Sometimes you want to give a link a label, http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/30/205858/489#c25 just doesn't explain things as well as Pig Wings. The 'Old School' HTML way to do this is-
- <a href="http://www.yourlink.com">Your Label Here!</a>
Well it makes perfect sense to me. 'a' stands for 'Anchor' and 'href' means 'Hypertext Reference'...
Ok, be that way. Good thing there's an Autoformat shortcut-
- [http://www.yourlink.com Your Link Label] == Your Link Label
The square brackets '[ ]' take the place of all that <a href stuff and if you want to, you can put your label first.
This is just the way I do it, the button in the 'Comment Posting Window' works just fine, uses the 'Old School' hyper compatable notation too.
Special Characters
One of the last things to be fixed in 'Ajax Comments' was allowing 'HTML Special Characters' in the 'Subject'. What is a Special Character and why should you ♥ them?
Well, it lets you be hip and trendy when you're posting in The Daily Show / The Cøbert Repørt Spoiler Thread. Do you need any other reason?
I don't do emoticons, but sometimes I do unemoticons-
- The Butterfly- <b>}¡{</b> == }¡{
- The Conspiracy Duck- <b>o\<</b> == o<
- Glasses- <sup>ó<u>-</u>ò</sup> == ó-ò
- A Pirate- |<b>¿</b>||<b> (‹¶</b> == |¿|| (‹¶
I belong to the cskendrick cult so I also have both old and new spider tattoos on my eyelids. You can't see them because they're on the inside.
- Old Spider /Ÿ\\ == /Ÿ\
- New Spider /Ŵ\\ == /Ŵ\
I have given you the power to be extremely obnoxious. Please don't hurt people's eyes, especially mine. They're very sensitive.
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.