Message Markup

[heyrick]

If you are posting using a browser that provides the fancy toolbar, the simplest way to use it is to type something and then select the text and then apply the style you want.
With links, I find that it's a great help to place a comma or space, then back up, and then insert the link. This stops subsequently entered content from being taken as part of the link. Bug in the editor, I think. ;-)

In all cases, you can use manually-inserted markup. It's similar to HTML, but not the same. The tags go in square brackets, as follows:

This:

Code:

Text in [i]italics[/i].
Text in [b]bold[/b].
Text [u]underlined[/u].
Text [s]struck through[/s].
You can [b][i]mix them up too[/i][/b]!

Looks like this:
Text in italics.
Text in bold.
Text underlined.
Text struck through.
You can mix them up too!

You can use 'em' and 'strong' instead of bold and italic; but it's more to type. :-)

You can create lists:

Code:

[list][*]First[/*][*]Second[/*][*]Third[/*][/list]

[list=1][*]First[/*][*]Second[/*][*]Third[/*][/list]

• First
  
• Second
  
• Third
  

1. First
   
2. Second
   
3. Third
   

You can insert links:

Code:

[url=https://heyrick.eu/blog/]Go visit my blog![/url]

Go visit my blog!

You can insert images:

Code:

[img]https://heyrick.eu/aldershot/images/icons/heart.png[/img]

If you are quoting somebody:

Code:

[quote]This is quoted.[/quote]

Looks like:

This is quoted.

You can also use 'code' to put things in a way that won't be parsed (as shown in the examples above). There's also 'size' for editing the text size (it's either 1-6, or a percentage), and 'color' (spelled the American way) for giving text colour.

For other ideas, Google for "BBCode markup".

[heyrick]

Smilies are automatically inserted if you type certain sequences, such as semi-colon, right bracket. (it doesn't work for ;-) though) or colon huh colon (that's a colon, the word "huh", and another colon).

Wink

Huh

If you have a fancy browser, there's a selection box on the left with various smilies, and "get more" will pop up an explanation of the shortcuts that can be used for all of them.

Personally, I find this annoying (especially the auto-subs) because they are a completely different size to the text and mess up the flow, but I don't want to turn it off unless there's a concensus that "yeah, they gotta go". Let me know.

[CliveSemmens]

With links, I find that it's a great help to place a comma or space, then back up, and then insert the link. This stops subsequently entered content from being taken as part of the link. Bug in the editor, I think. ;-)

Given that I find it necessary to do the same thing in gmail on Firefox, it seems forgiveable.