Entertainment For Lively Minds
Idiot's Guide to HTML Tags please anyone...
Posted by Retro Man on 7 September 2010 - 2:50pm.
Sorry, I've searched the Blog and the internet but I'm still stuck.
I wanted to put something in italics or bold, but when I do try to utilise these bracket things it seems to highlight the whole sentence rather than just the one word I want.
Can any kind soul help a befuddled Luddite out please?
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Forward slash
You have to put the brackets and a forward slash to stip the bold/italics etc. eg <.em>this. But ignore the full stop which I put there to stop it working. If you see what I mean.
Cheers
I'll try
but it's difficult to explain without inadvertently doing the formatting myself! So:
To make something bold: < b >text< / b > (without spaces)
To make something italic: < i >text< / i > (again without spaces)
< blockquote >text< / blockquote > (guess what? without spaces)
To insert a hyperlink, say, to The Word Magazine, it's: < a href = " URL " >text < / a >
NB: Here, the URL (i.e. web address) must include the http:// bit at the beginning. Also, no spaces in the above EXCEPT between the "a" and the "href" at the beginning.
Hope that helps :)
Tags
Sounds to me like you're not closing your tags properly.
Embolden text by using "b" tags <b>like this</b> or use "i" tags for italics <i>like this</i>.
Notice the forward slash before the closing "b" and "i" tags. If you don't use that, everything that follows will also be in bold or italicised.
I'm sure Fraser won't mind me pointing out...
that it's now frowned upon to use bold and italic tags, as above.
They've been 'deprecated' and if you want to bold things up, you should use < strong > or < em >
They're not deprecated
Not yet. 'i' and 'b' are both current and fully-supported - both are valid in HTML 4.0 Strict - whereas depracated tags like 'u' and 'strike' aren't.
What's changed is the introduction of more semantic tags, like the ones you mention. I prefer to use them, but the earlier tags are more beginner-friendly - because the mark-up is purely visual - so I tend to recommend them. The rest can follow.
Why's that then?
That sounds retrogressive to me. It takes a lot longer to type "strong" than it does "b" but I'm assuming there's a reason behind it...
Well...
Although they appear the same when rendered on a web page, they actually mean slightly different things. I'm simplifying things, but "b" is now largely considered to a design element, i.e. "this headline would look cool in bold, so I'll wrap it in "b" tags", while "strong" is used more for linguistic emphasis. If someone with hearing problems is using a screen-reader, this is an important difference.
While we're at it
Embedding images. Not loading them, I can do that, but making the text run around them. Anyone?
Aligning images
<img src="http://www.foo.com/image.jpg" align="left"> will align an image to the left of any text that follows.
Let's try that...
and
furthermore
da!
Edit: needs a border though, dunnit?
That's something I need to sort out
That padding is provided automatically on posts, but not in comments.
oh and
that clever thing you do where you hide a link behind text
Linking
The following HTML would provide a link the homepage: <a href="http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/">Word Magazine homepage</a>
The "http://" bit must be included.
Like this?
Like this?
Edit: yes!
It sounds to me like you were doing everything right
[Edited to remove the answer already provided by Fraser above]
By the way, I've tried the FAQ and even seen a couple dummies' guides to uploading pictures, but I still don't seem to be able to do it. What normally happens is I upload a pic to ImageShack, it generates a whole load of codes (Link, Direct Link, Widget Code, Forum Code, Alt Forum Code etc) and I choose the wrong one.
I'm going to try Forum Code now.
[URL=http://img842.imageshack.us/i/265h.jpg/][IMG]http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/6636/265h.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[/URL]
See? There should be a pic there but instead there's just a load of code.
We don't accept BBcode
We just limit the number of HTML tags you can use, and close any malformed tags automatically. This does away with the need for BBcode.
It's the HTML code
Thanks, Fraser
...and thanks, Gatz, for the answer in English :)
This is very liberating
I've finally come out as an idiot and it feels good. We should do this more often.
One more; linking to a specific post in another thread?
Click on the title of the post
Then copy the address from the address bar at the top of your browser and use your new-found linking skills in the same way that you normally would.
Like this?
Like this?
Edit: yes!
I assumed you meant "click on the title of the post" which turns out to be right.
I'm going to be fucking unbearable now
thread/post
Yes. Duly edited, thanks.
Rather
than use italics, just look at your screen with your head at an angle.
(via @hftfcouk at Viz Top Tips on Twitter)
Thanks!
For all the helpful comments! Beers all round on Friday!
...ignore that last bit, I was just trying out my new found skills...
How do you ....
.... always ensure an embedded You Tube link fits in the box and doesn't overflow and look untidy? Do you have to edit the code?
There's two ways
1. Just paste the URL of the YouTube page into your post - not the embedding code - and the video will display automatically in a size that'll fit.
2. Click the "embed" button below the video at YouTube. You'll see a bunch of options below the code that allow you to customise it. Choose any option that displays the video in a player less than 600 pixels in width (560 is the widest option that fits our template).
A good place to practice and learn
If you fancy trying out a few new tricks W3 Schools has a page where you can mess about with HTML and view it straight away - they also have lots of tutorial pages on other tags.
(Unrelated to HTML) ITunes advice needed, please
I recently had my PC stolen in a burglary debacle. Luckily, I didn't have my iPod stolen so I've got all my music backed up. Trouble is, I'm not sure how to backload it from my iPod to my new PC and iTunes set up. Can anyone help with instructions, please? (Sorry if this is obvious but I'm a bit technically challenged and I don't have any teenagers to hand)