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Hi there. So you think your text looks boring and you want to make it a little fancier? Here are some useful tips for adding different things to your posts to make them stand out. Don't feel you have to memorize this stuff, because I won't take this page away. You can come back here and look it up any time you need it.
This is called HTML (Hyer-text Markup Language), and it tells the computer how you want your text to look. These are just a few simple HTML tags you can use to jazz up your text. There are, of course, lots of other things HTML can do, but you don't need to worry about them one little bit!
Always remember, if you're using any of these HTML codes, you have to click on the box that says 'post as HTML' before you submit your post, or the computer will just show all your programming to everyone, and won't do the programming. Good luck! I know you can do it, it just takes a little practice, and this page will always be here for reference!
For this forum, I'll show you:HTML tags are written with < and > These are brackets you have to put around all of your directions. They won't be seen on the finished product, they're just instructions to the computer. The computer knows they're instructions because they're in those <> brackets. You can't use any of the other brackets on your keyboard, [ ] won't work, { } won't work, ( ) won't work, it has to be
< and >.
You need to put some instructions in brackets at the beginning of the text you want to affect, and at the end to tell it to stop. You tell it to stop by putting the / symbol at the beginning of the stop order.
An example:
<order to computer> text you want affected by the order </order to computer>
So if you type in :
<B> make this text bold </B>
you will get:
make this text bold
You've just seen it in the paragraph above:
<B> text </B>
will give you: text
<I> text </I> will give you: text
"Gosh, why doesn't it look like I typed it? I put a new paragraph right there, I know I did!" Yeah, I believe you did. Because it's looking for HTML code*, and you didn't put any HTML returns in, the computer is ignoring your regular hard returns. If you want a line break (also called a page return, or a hard return, etc), you need to do something like this:
The quick brown fox jumped over <BR> the lazy dogs.
When you do that, you'll see:
The quick brown fox jumped over
the lazy dogs.
Note: Hard Returns are a lot simpler than most HTML code. You don't have to put an order at the end. It's a one-time only shot. You say <BR>, but you never say </BR>. It's a special trick!
* You only need to do this if there is other HTML code in your post. If you're not using any HTML, your returns will show up without doing anything special. If you click on 'post as HTML' (which you have to do if you're using any other HTML at all), then your returns won't show up unless you put <BR> in every place you want a hard return.
For a chart of "official" colors and their names, check out the Color Chart at the top of this page. Find the color you want, and type in that name! When you're picking a new color for your text, remember that the page you'll be putting your text on will be a pale blue. Similar colors might be hard to read.
Lists are a little more complicated than the other HTML tags. First, you tell the computer you want to make a list: <UL> (UL stands for Unordered List. An unordered list is one that has bullets instead of numbers)
Then for each item on the list, you need to put this in front of it: <LI> (LI stands for List Item)
When you get to the end of your list, you need to type: </UL>
An example:
<UL>
<LI>one
<LI>two
<LI>three
</UL>
Will show up on the screen like this:
To do this, you need to know the address (also known as a URL) of the site
you wish to make a link to. A URL looks something like this:
<A HREF="http://www.zbs.org">ZBS</A> will do this: ZBS
<A HREF="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo</A> will do this:Yahoo
Go ahead and try these out, they are real links, and they do work! Be sure to use your browser's back button to return to this page.
You need to be careful with this tag: make sure you put a space between the A and the HREF, don't put spaces where I didn't put any, and don't leave out the quotation marks!
Sometimes you want to underline something just for emphasis. Using the underline feature will not make your text a link, and therefore it will not change to another color like a link usually does.
<U> text </U> will give you: text
Always remember, if you're using any of these HTML codes, you have to click on the box that says 'post as HTML' before you submit your post, or the computer will just show all your programming to everyone, and won't do the programming. Good luck! I know you can do it, it just takes a little practice, and a lot of patience! Also, this page will always be here for reference!