Posted on 05/31/2008 9:09:38 PM PDT by sig226
It's time for a new HTML reference so you can make your posts look cool.
HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language. It's a set of simple commands used to format the text of your posts, add images, or links, or change the appearance.
URL is Uniform Resource Locator. It's the name of the page or the picture that you see, the www.http:// stuff. You'll need to use the URL to make links and post pictures.
Quotation Marks Quotes have to be used around the URLs for web pages and images on Free Republic. Some systems do not require this. Ours does.
Once the Free Republic software detects an HTML tag in your post, it will assume the entire thing was written for HTML. This means it will eliminate paragraphs and line breaks that you used to clarify your writing. In order to prevent that, I'll start with the two simplest tags, <br> and <p>. When you use html tags, they disappear when the post is pasted to the board, so don't worry if they look funny or if your post seems to run on.
This is the break tag. <br>
It tells the computer to end the line and start a new one. <br>
Just type it where you want the line to end. <br>
This is the paragraph tag. <p>
It tells the computer to end the line, insert a blank one, then start a new line.
The rest of the tags have to be used with an on tag and an off tag. This is simple enough. One of the most commonly used tags is the italic tag <i>. This tag turns the italics on. When you want the italics to end, turn them off by using the forward slash with the appropriate command, in this case, </i>.
Commonly used tags:
<p> paragraph
<br> line break
These tags are not used in pairs.
Commonly used pairs:
<i> </i>italics
<b> </b>bold characters
<u> </u>underline
<font color = red>This makes the font red.</font color = red> Orange,blue,green,purple,and yellow also work.
<center> </center>
Headline fonts
Headlines add emphasis to an important point.
You can use 1,2,3,4, or 5. The tags automatically insert a blank line between the headline and your next paragraph.
Sarcasm tag
</sarc> This is the sarcasm tag. It is not a real HTML tag. It is used to mark your witty repartee so that everyone will know you are making a funny. Type an ampersand - & then lt; then /sarc. An & and gt makes the other carat >.
How to create a link:
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/home.htm">www.Free Republic.com</a>
A means anchor. H ref means horizontal reference. It's called horizontal because the computer is going across the web to a different page. There are also vertical links that can go to specific points on the same page. What comes after the a href= is where the computer will go. The horizontal reference is the complete URL of the page you want to link. It's in the navigation bar at the top of your web browser. Highlight it and copy it. Make sure you get all of it. Some URLs are surprisingly long, and if you miss some of the URL, the link might not work.
You can type anything between the <a href=></a> parts.
www.Free Republic.com
Click here.
abc12345
All of these links go to the same page, I just typed different things between <a href=></a> tags.
How to add images to your post:
<img src=></img>
The img tags tell the computer to find and insert a picture.
These tags insert this wonderful image from Rush Limbaugh's website:
<img src="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_062807/content/01125113.Par.4584.ImageFile.jpg""height=218""width=285"></img>
You need to know the URL of the picture to do this. You can see the picture's URL when you put your cursor on the picture and right click the mouse. You see a small box with "properties" at the bottom. Left click on "properties" and you get a dialog box with the image URL and dimensions. It says Address: next to the URL, with (URL) underneath. Copy the URL and paste it after your img src= tag. Make sure you get all of the URL for the picture. There isn't a lot of space for the URL and sometimes they are very long. The image Size and Dimensions are beneath the URL. Free Republic allocates memory for each image, and if it doesn't know the dimensions of the image, it will allocate more memory than needed. It tells you the width, then the height of the picture. You don't have to tell the computer that the height of that image was 218 and the width was 285, but it saves memory and memory costs money.
This is called a hotlink. The picture is actually on another computer, but we see it here. This causes the other computer to use it's memory and machinery to provide the image. Some sites prevent it, or object to it. You can't hotlink an image from any of Yahoo's GeoCities pages, for example. Yahoo prevents it.
Do Not Cut And Paste List.
Some websites have forbidden us to copy and paste their material, including images. There have been lawsuits over this. The software will mostly prevent you from using the material that has been blocked, but not always. There are also some image sources that are not allowed on the list. Please don't use them. Lawsuits suck.
Link to the Do Not Cut And Paste List
What image is it? That's not it is it...
LOL!
Still not getting it. Failblog.org provides the entire address for you to just copy and paste. I can handle that. It’s the pictures on other sites that are giving me trouble...you know, where you have to right click on the photo, left-click on “properties” and then copy the URL provided there. The problem is that the address there is really short compared to the ones on failblog, so I’m not sure where to find the rest of the address. It’s my understanding that they are supposed to be quite long.
Thanks for your help, though. It was a heroic effort!! I’ve never been accused of being computer literate. Lol.
I’ll get my FReeper brother to show me hand-over-hand what to do. Apparently that’s what it’s going to take for me to “get” it!
Thanks again!
TXBlair
Some things have changed. Right-Click and choose “copy link address” see if that helps.
Isn’t is a scream?! Scroll up to posts 174 and 175 and you’ll see that I got the pictures there, but that was using the super-easy copy and paste method using the URL that failblog.org provided. I didn’t have to add <img scr or any of that.
The picture I can’t get to show up is just some random Michelle Obama/Aunt Esther photo.
bump
I right clicked and “copy link address” isn’t one of the options. I clicked “copy”, though, but the pic wouldn’t transfer. Oh well, I’ll try again some other time. Thanks anyway. I’ll send you an image some day when I get this stuff all figured out. Not sure what yet, but I promise you it’ll be a good one! :o)
Copy image address.... My bad
That wasn’t one of the options, either. The only thing that came close was plain ol’ “copy,” and that didn’t work. I’m telling ya, it’s me! :)
bump
I take it this pic isn’t at a web site.
The link in the above post goes to the page; scroll down to the “collage” of Obama/Aunt Esther pictures. That’s the image I was trying to practice with.
Yes! That’s the one!! How did you do that???
Check your mailbox
Okay, I right-clicked and copied the address, but this is all I got:
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g312/Mike____Smith/Miscellaneous/ester.jpg
That’s the same as what I was getting before. I can’t figure out how to get ahold of the rest of the address. There has to be more.
I think I’m giving up for tonight, but will try again tomorrow. Thanks for all your help...I’ll get there eventually (I hope!).
> after .jpg, it’s called closing the tag (an old problem here at FR)
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