HTML SANDBOX 2021

[Hebrews 11:6]

HTML SANDBOX 2021

We are so blessed by Jim and John Robinson, and by God through them, with this marvelous website. FreeRepublic has many capabilities you can use to refine your posts, to make your points more emphatically and dramatically.

Many posters have given us previous versions of this Sandbox, but since the most recent was in 2016, it's now well past time for another.

"HTML" is Hyper Text Markup Language, which can make your typing-text fancier and more useful. You supply invisible commands to produce remarkable effects. These commands are encased in left and right carets, like this: <command>.*

Before beginning, ALWAYS remember The Three Rules of HTML Posting:

1. PREVIEW! 2. PREVIEW! 3. PREVIEW!

CONTENTS
1. TEXT
2. FONTS
3. TEXT BLOCKS
4. LINKS/PICTURES/VIDEOS
5. TABLES

1. TEXT

Here are basic ON and OFF commands—note that each must be terminated with </command>.

Feature	What You Type	Result
BOLD	<B>my text</B>	my text
UNDERLINE	<U>my text</U>	my text
ITALIC	<i>my text</i>	my text
STRIKE	<S>my text</S>	my text
SUPERSCRIPT	<SUP>my text</SUP>	my text
SUBSCRIPT	<SUB>my text</SUB>	my text

You can combine these as you wish:
<B><U><I>my text</B></U></I> = my text

2. FONTS

A. FONT SIZES
We can choose from 7 sizes, 1-7:

<font size=1>my text</font> = my text
<font size=4>my text</font> = my text
<font size=7>my text</font> = my text
^{Special trick if you want text even tinier than Size 1: use Superscript, or Subscript; it wont align with adjacent text, but that won't matter if you give it its own line, like this.}

B. FONT COLORS
We can choose from many, many colors.
The ON-OFF command is

<font color=my choice>my text</font color=my choice>

To choose a color, you have two options:

1. type in a common color name, like Red or Blue:
<font color=red>mytext</font color=red> = my text

OR

2. visit one of these websites, for a much larger variety:
HTML Color Codes
HTML Color Names
Either type in the color name or the code:
<font color=#01DF01>mytext</font color> = my text
If you plan on using these sites, I suggest you bookmark them NOW!

C. FONT FACES
We can choose from many, many font-faces. Here are several examples:

<font face=Broadway>My Text</font face=Broadway>=My Text

<font face=Chiller>My Text</font face=Chiller> = My Text

ALSO: Arial, Cooper Black, Courier, Forte, Georgia, Helvetica, Impact, Jokerman, Magneto, Mistral, Playbill, STENCIL

If you don't see what you want here, enter a Font Name from your Word Processor and then Preview to see if FR supports it.

3. TEXT BLOCKS

A. LINES
To force a new line, use the BREAK command: <BR>
Then, you'll be down here. All your active commands are unaffected.
To insert multiple lines, use multiple <BR>s.


B. PARAGRAPHS
To force a new line PLUS a blank line, use the PARAGRAPH command: <P>

Then, you'll be down here. Some active commands are terminated.


C. INDENTING
Four times already in this document I've indented blocks of text, using the <blockquote> command. Of course, its terminator is </blockquote>. I'll use it again here while I mention some fine-points:

1. Be aware that Blockquote also indents the Right margin.

2. You can use multiple Blockquotes simultaneously to narrow the text even more.

3. Don't forget to terminate your Blockquote(s).

D. CENTERING
To center your text: <center>my text</center>.

E. NUMBERING To create a numbered list: <OL> <LI>first term <LI>second term <LI>third term </OL> Yields: first term second term third term

F. BULLETING To create a bulleted list: <UL> <LI>first term <LI>second term <LI>third term </UL> Yields: first term second term third term

G. SEPARATING
To separate blocks of text, install a Horizontal Rule, at the width, size (height) and alignment you specify:

<hr width="25%"> yields

---

<hr width="75%"> yields

---

Specify different heights (in pixels, not %) and alignment (left or center):

<hr width="50%" size="10" align="left"> yields

---

Fill in (with grey only) using NOSHADE:

<hr width="50%" size="10" NOSHADE> yields

---

4. LINKS, PICTURES & VIDEOS

A. LINKS
You can easily provide a link to another website. To do that, first copy that site's address, called its URL (Universal Resource Locater). The URL is that https//: address at the top of that site's window in your browser. (Whatever you link to must be a live internet site—sorry, you cannot link to your computer.)

Here is the link command:

<a href="URL">my text</a>

Your text is however you want to label your link—usually that website's name, but you're free to label it as you wish. Here is an example: I'll link to Bible Gateway's site, but I'll give it a different label.

<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=NIV">God's Good News</a>

which yields God's Good News


B. PICTURES
Posting pictures could not be any easier! (But, as for links, the picture must be somewhere on the internet, not on your hard drive. Image hosting sites can solve this for you.)

Here is the picture command:

<img src="Image Link"/>

Doesn't that look easy? There are just two minor things to keep in mind:

1. Right-click on the picture, click on "Copy Image Link", and then paste it into your command!
(Firefox and MS Edge call it "Image Link", but Brave calls it "image address".)

2. You will want to control your picture's width, as a percentage of the screen's width. Here's how:

To add a Width limit: <img src="Image Link" width="x%"/>

Here is Mount Rushmore:

<img src="https://a57.foxnews.com/a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/01/640/320/1862/1048/MountRushmore1.jpg?ve=1&tl=1?ve=1&tl=1" width="30%"/>

which yields



Now, let's increase it from 30% to 80%--and let's center it:

C. VIDEOS
Sorry, FR does not support embedding videos. The best we have are GIFs, those short videos which last several seconds and then repeat endlessly.

5. TABLES
FIRST, let's look at two exquisite examples:

This first example shows the traditional use of tables: displaying organized data. Obviously, it is a masterpiece.

This second example shows tables being used to achieve a stunning artistic effect. The poster has embedded tables within other tables and added text and pictures.

Did you notice above when I put two columns of text (E & F) side-by-side? That was a rudimentary table. The reason it does not look like a table is that I did not give it a border.

I don't really have anything to add to the 2016 Sandbox's discussion on tables. I just wanted you to know that tables can do more than merely presenting facts and figures, so I'll leave it at that.

By the way, that excellent Sandbox also discusses Footnotes extensively.

Finally, ALWAYS remember The Three Rules of HTML Posting:

1. PREVIEW!

2. PREVIEW!

3. PREVIEW!

(Yep, this is another table.)

---

* Throughout this document, I've used a special trick, which you should never need to use; but you'll wonder how I did it if I don't explain it. It involves the dozens of left-and right-carets (< and >) I showed.

If I were simply to type < and >, you would not see them, because HTML makes them invisible. So instead, I typed & lt; and & gt; WITHOUT THE SPACE AFTER THE &. Then, they become math symbols: "less than", lt, and "greater than", gt—and now HTML ignores them.

That leads to another point you may well use. I wondered how the previous Sandbox poster was able to show carets, so I investigated. While on the page I right-clicked and then clicked on "View Page Source." (I'm using Firefox, and your browser may use a different term.) Once I arrived at the Source, I navigated around until I saw how it was done. I've used that method previously to learn from others; in fact, that's how I learned about Tables.

[Hebrews 11:6]

Salute to ShadowAce, who carried the Sandbox torch so ably for years, and whose kind acquiescence encouraged this effort.

(This is a TABLE, with the text in the left window and the image in the right.)

[Codeflier]

Hopefully your efforts will help a few people.

[nuconvert]

Thanks for posting

sfl

[Dr. Sivana]

Thank you. A lot of the HTML still used here has been deprecated or even eliminated in newer versions of HTML because of style sheets, etc. It has gotten to the point where it is hard enough to find certain commands without being scolded not to use them, and not actually describing their function.

[Hebrews 11:6]

For your consideration.

[ShadowAce]

[Hebrews 11:6]

Heads up! I referenced one of your amazing table-postings in the TABLES section.

[Dr. Sivana]

I would also recommend that when folks include lists or tables where characters on different rows have to line up, use a monospaced typeface like Courier, Consolas, Letter Gothic or Orator combined with < > for multiple hardspaces between terms on the same line.

[Hebrews 11:6]

One good GIF deserves another.

[Mathews]

BTTT

[CheshireTheCat]

Thank you for posting.

Perfect timing.

I am going to be taking a “staycation” soon and bumping up my computer skills was on my agenda.

[Dr. Sivana]

The space between brackets was supposed to be & n b s p .

[Tallguy]

bookmarked!

[PROCON]

HTML Bump!

[NautiNurse]

Nice work. Thank you for your efforts.

[Red Badger]

GREAT! This will totally speed up my POSTS!............................

[Hebrews 11:6]

I deliberately kept it simple and short, so helpful tips like yours will populate these replies. The last Sandbox generated 300 comments.

[kabar]

Bookmark

[Yo-Yo]

One addition to posting pictures: When specifying width, you can specify percentage of browser window width, which you demonstrate, which is very handy because the image rescales as you rescale your browser window.

Or you can specify number of pixels, which keeps the image a certain size, which is handy when posting memes with writing that must be read.

Using your example, <img src="https://a57.foxnews.com/a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/01/640/320/1862/1048/MountRushmore1.jpg?ve=1&tl=1?ve=1&tl=1" width="400"> will yield an image 400 pixels wide:

Likewise, you can specify a fixed height by substituting "height" for "width" in the above example, which is handy if you want to put two pics side-by-side and have both of them the same height:

<img src="https://a57.foxnews.com/a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2020/01/640/320/1862/1048/MountRushmore1.jpg?ve=1&tl=1?ve=1&tl=1" height="200"> <img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/ZBVhKIDgts1eHYdT7u/giphy.gif" height="200"gt; yields:

[Hebrews 11:6]

Oh, no—anything but THAT!