Above Top Secret – Using the posting area

It is simple – just type and be damned. Nope, that makes for difficult to read posts and broken links so here is a short tutorial on how to make ‘pretty’ posts. Various code can be used when posting, and on ATS these are a subset of what are called BB Codes or Bulletin Board Codes. In effect these are themselves a form of HTML coding. On ATS you can do most of the ‘coding’ using the functions provided and not need to know or understand BB codes at all.

Using the controls First I will take a look at how you can format your posting using the built in controls. During the course of that you will probably get to realise what the manual equivalents are, but I will cover that and some combinations at the end. Whilst you can use colours (Text colour, or color for those who speak American ) obviously (I hope) a post with many different colours will be extremely hard on the eyes of the reader. See an example on the next page:

So this is where you can change the colours.

Please note that you cannot highlight and then select the colour. That will just delete the text. As you can see above red, yellow and orange work reasonably well. Some others just do not! This is the code that produces the next example on the next page [color=White]Text White[/color] [color=Black]Text Black[/color] [color=Red]Text Red[/color] [color=Yellow]Text Yellow[/color] [color=Pink]Text Pink[/color] [color=Green]Text Green[/color]

[color=Orange]Text Orange[/color] [color=Purple]Text Purple[/color] [color=Blue]Text Blue[/color] [color=Beige]Text Beige[/color] [color=Brown]Text Brown[/color] [color=Teal]Text Teal[/color] [color=Navy]Text Navy[/color] [color=Maroon]Text Maroon[/color]

Not pretty is it? You used to be able to ‘go light’ but I have not seen that recently so I will stick with dark. This following example actually applies to most of the functions here:

Click on OK and the text will be inserted into the post.

Take a look at a headline:

This gives you this

And when it has been posted it looks like this:

You are probably beginning to get the idea now that you can just type these in if you wish. This makes it much easier to change something since you can ‘insert’ the codes around existing text.

Result:

Results

Other functions This next one is one of the functions that needs to be understood by all who post links on to ATS. So many times I see broken links because people have not used the tools available, and in addition links which are not broken are not pretty unless formatted. On the next page there are so examples of unformatted and broken links and then of the correct method of presenting them.

Results

If you try and click the broken link it will either not work, or take you to a higher level in the site. What these should look like is this:

So how does this get done?

Click on ‘link’

This is asking for the text that should be displayed. Do NOT leave it blank or you end up with what is in effect an unformatted link. Fill it in:

Click on ‘OK’

Next screen is this

Here you paste or type in your link.

Click on OK and the text in the post will look like the screen shot on the next page

When posted it looks like this:

Can you in all honesty say that the first unformatted one is better than the informative second version? No I did not think so. Sure it takes a little effort but it is worth it. Next up – images

Images Ah images! Yes let us put an image in the post. Click on ‘image’

I have this great image from a website that I want to share so I post the link in the box

And then I click on OK

The link has been formatted, so I click on post and get:

Um, what happened here? Let’s take another look at the code.

Yup, it says img. Well basically for an image hosted on another site this is the way it works. If you really MUST use this I consider it only fair that you make the proper attribution by adding some text that says what the image is, who it belongs to etc. Now let me tell you a (fictitious) story. John was out of work, but had a passion for inventing things. He had a web site, that he could just afford to keep going, where he talked about his inventions. One day in a fit of madness stupidity he posted 20 pages of plans to make a working flying saucer, which did work by the way. The work got out and people were going to his web site, downloading the plans, other sites were linking to the pictures of the plans and all of a sudden his site vanished. Why? Each image was 24Mb as they were very large AO size and there were 20 of them = 480 Mb. Just two links or accesses used up nearly 1 Gb of his data allowance. (bandwidth as some call it) He only has 100 Gb which he thought would be more than enough for the year. In hours it was gone and he could not afford to buy more bandwidth. Basically I say DON’T DO IT. I believe that unless the site owner is some sort of government or educational agency and is set up for this type of thing or is a company who is not going to object to you ‘using their bandwidth’ as they expect you to then it is not good manners. OK, so how DO you put an image on ATS?

There are some new BB Codes added today now the uploading of images is back again;

You can no longer add images to the old media section, but you can still log in to ti. Picture Gallery on ATS The new upload area is found at the top of the page

Which you can get to either from your profile page or any other topic page

You will see the screen on the next page

Click on the button to start selecting files from you computer. The image will load and you will see a thumbnail

On the next page you will see the screen that appears when you have clicked on the thumbnail.

To place the image into your post you must highlight and copy the version that you wish to use. The [pic][/pic] displays the image as is.

The [thumb][/thumb] version displays a clickable thumbnail in your post that will open the image in a new tab whan someone clicks on it. The bottom link is the external file address. Note also the three links above for using the uploaded image in your Avatar, your Profile Backgrond and your Signature. Please make sure that you stick to the rules for dimansions and upload sizes for these images. This is what it says on that page above about this:

Maximum File Size: 500kb

ATS Avatars should be no larger than 170 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall, with a maximum file size of 75kb.

ATS Mini-Profile Backgrounds should be no larger than 200 pixels wide by 700 pixels tall, with a

maximum file size of 150kb.

ATS Signature Images should be no larger than 600 pixels wide by 70 pixels tall, with a maximum file size

of 50kb.

This is what the thumbnails look like in a post

Just click the thumb and the image opens in a new tab.

So what about the next four functions on the posting box?

I would not want to text my ex, it would not be news and I could not quote what she would say – just give you a list?

EX-TEXT This is used when you want to quote external text in your post. It might be and excerpt from a web site or an article or even a book or newspaper. Whatever it may be please do NOT post the WHOLE of the text. There is nothing worse than a great raft of text in the ex box. This is ex text

Just one paragraph and correctly attributed either above or below the text block. Use the built in function or wrap the text in [ex] …… [/ex]

News Really only used where you are making a first post which is NOT in the Alternative Breaking News forum. The ‘tags’ are [news] …… [/news] [editby]edit on 20/12/2010 by PuterMan because: (no reason given)[/editby]

BBCode example HTML Effect [b]bolded text[/b]

<b>bolded text</b> <strong>bolded text</strong>

or <span style="font-weight: bold;">bolded text</span>

bolded text [i]italicized text[/i]

<i>italicized text</i>

<em>italicized text</em>

or <span style="font-style: italic;">italicized text</span>

italicized text

[u]underlined text[/u]

<u>underlined text</u>

<ins>underlined text</ins>

or <span style="text-decoration: underline;">underlined text</span>

underlined text

[s]strikethrough text[/s]or on ATS [strike][/strike]

<s>strikethrough text</s>

<del>strikethrough text</del>

or <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">strikethrough text</span>

strikethrough text

[url]http://example.org[/url]

<a href="http://example.org">http://example.org</a>

http://example.org

[url=http://example.com]Example[/url] <a href="http://example.com">Example</a>

Example

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Go-home.svg/100px-Go-

home.svg.png[/img] <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Go-home.svg/100px-

Go-home.svg.png" alt="" /> [quote]quoted text[/quote]

<blockquote><p>quoted text</p></blockquote>

(usually implemented in more advanced ways) To quote:

quoted text

[code]monospaced text[/code]

<pre>monospaced text</pre>

monospaced text [size=15]Large Text[/size] (The unit of measurement varies with each BBCode variant and could represent pixels, points, or relative HTML sizes.) <span style="font-size:15px">Large Text</span>

Large Text

[color=red]Red Text[/color] or

[color=#FF0000]Red Text[/color] or [color=FF0000]Red Text[/color] (Both HTML color names and hexadecimal color values are generally supported, although on some boards, you must omit the #

from selecting a hexadecimal color.)

<span style="color:#FF0000;">Red Text</span> Red Text :)

[:-)]

this would be another way to use the [img]url_img[/img] and must be pre-configured for the forum

administrator

(And other emoticons, depending on the variant)

<img src="Face-smile.gif" alt=":-)">

(Specific image and size vary)

[table] [tr] [td]table data[/td] [/tr] [/table] (Not available in ATS)

(Rarely used)

<table><tr><td>table data</td></tr></table>

table data

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode