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
Thanks Eyedigress. I think it worked this round.
Now you’ve got it. HTML commands are “Started” with < and “ended” with >. Make a copy of the basics and your off and running. :^)
I can’t believe I did it!!!lol.... Thanks again!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2292614/posts?q=1&;page=494#494
Start playing with the href command and you can customize the name of that link.
How's this:
I figured out what I was doing wrong. I had jotted down the instructions for posting an image from page one of this thread. Unfortunately, I wrote "scr" instead of "src". So every time I followed my notes, I got it wrong. Duh. I've never been identified as being dyslexic, but maybe...
Thanks again for your help the other night! Sorry I was so hopeless! I'm so excited to be able to "play with the big kids" now!!
The first rule of a “programmer” is check every character. All spaces, dots and the like. Language in the computer world leaves no room for error. Good Luck. :^)
Also keep in mind you are “hot-linking”, sometimes a pic is protected against this.
Maybe that was the problem. The image showed up in my repsonse “preview” and then I checked—it was indeed posted to the thread. So I was super-surprised to notice that it had disappeared later! Thanks for the info about pictures being protected. That makes sense. I’ll keep playing and see if I can find images that “stick.”
how do I post my own picture from my computer to a post?
You have to upload your pictures to a webhost that allows ‘linking’. The best free one is Photo bucket. Open an account and upload your pictures and post away!
Good luck.
Thanks.
ping
damn them some ugly women/s
You need to open a photo-bucket account. It’s free. Upload your pic to there then link to it on your post.
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