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Post by Bailey on Apr 25, 2018 12:05:31 GMT
I have used bbcode on other web sites to custom stylise my posts and today I came across Major Major's mini tutorial on bbcode in the FAQ section. I decided to have a bit of a play using the post editor's bbcode mode to stylise some of my posts and below are 3 examples of some of the styling that is possible for anyone interested in spicing up their posts. So if you're interested, have a bit of a play in bbcode mode. (If you are familiar with at least the basics of html and css styling, it would help) |
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Post by whippet on Apr 25, 2018 17:49:39 GMT
Well, I like the idea, bailey. When I first got a computer, I had a try at learning html, but it was too much for my tired old brain. So I went to one of the sites where you could build a web site in plain English, and they converted it. Anything for an easy life.  |
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Post by Bailey on Apr 26, 2018 0:48:46 GMT
Hi whippet,
Yes nowadays it is much easier to create at least basic websites through drag and drop online or local applications. I am very, very old school when web sites were mainly hand coded. BBCODE is a tool which the user can use to do simple styling, but it is all hand coding in the post editor and so hardly used. If you are familiar with HTML and CSS then it's pretty straight forward and takes little extra time to custom style a post beyond the default features (font colour, add links etc) in the toolbar.
But it can be useful to help separate different sections of a post, scale images to a smaller size so they can be posted side by side instead of vertically down the page, add a bit of colour to a post etc.
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Post by hmca on Apr 26, 2018 13:53:58 GMT
Hi Bailey,
I think the way our forum naturally separates posts works well. I find the dark grays and black rather jarring and don't think they add to the overall look of the forum. There is a saying that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. If a number of people were to adopt this way of posting, I think it would interrupt the flow of a thread. I guess I am thinking of it just as I would consider how one of my pictures looks......is it visually pleasing? Just my impression.
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Post by Bailey on Apr 26, 2018 22:37:34 GMT
Hi hmca, Thank you for your thoughts. Although they are contrary to much of the feedback I have received I can see how it would be very easy for people to go over the top with styling posts and even I would find that disruptive. If used sparingly and with consideration, custom styling can add a lot to a thread, for example laying out images appropriately (in terms of size and location) in a post relative to the text. The examples I provided above are just examples of the types of styling that can be achieved. Given Major Major's tutorial on using bbcode I referred to in my OP, I believe it is a clear signal for members to use bbcode to style posts, but I take your point that it should not be disruptive or intrusive relative to the rest of the thread (but what is disruptive or intrusive relative to the rest of the thread can be subjective as well  ). I will try to use bbcode sparingly and non intrusively where I feel it is appropriate in my posts from now on |
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Post by Tpgettys on Apr 26, 2018 23:21:45 GMT
One of the formatting options that is rarely used is the Table (available as a button on the editor tool bar). I like it very much for putting images next to each other, left-right, instead of above-below.
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Post by Bailey on Apr 27, 2018 3:28:42 GMT
One of the formatting options that is rarely used is the Table (available as a button on the editor tool bar). I like it very much for putting images next to each other, left-right, instead of above-below. Hi Tpgettys, In a forum like this where users might not be familiar with HTML and/or CSS then I suppose that is the only choice but...........HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a markup language and each element/tag has its own semantic purpose. For example the img tag is for images, the p tag is for paragraphs and the Table element is for tabular data (not styling/laying out page content). Yes, back in the early dark days of the www most people used tables for formatting layouts. But it soon became apparent they lead to gross code bloat, were cumbersome and broke easily. Nowadays, if you go to any web site development forum you will see that using Tables for styling/laying out page content is at least heavily frowned upon, if not taboo. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the way to style and layout web page content now. Best practice in web site development now teaches to keep the markup (HTML) and styling (CSS) completely separate or as as much as possible.In case anyone is not aware, when you use any of the preset tools in the tool bar (smilie, add link, table, quote etc) you are actually using bbcode in the background. So clicking and hence using the Table feature is actually using BBCODE anyway .The preset tools are just triggers that execute bbcode for you. If you click on the bbcode button in the bottom left corner of the post editor you will see the actual bbcode those triggers and the rest of your post creates. If you are familiar with HTML and CSS you can then edit the markup and styling to suit.
For example: These images' actual size is 600px x 600px
If you created this same layout using tables, the amount of code will be considerably more than this which uses only CSS to style/layout the images
[div style="width:70%;margin:0em auto 0em auto;"]
[img style="width:31%;float:left;border:1px solid rgb(0,0,0);margin-right:1em;" src="https://image.ibb.co/dOcNzH/image1.jpg"]
[img style="width:31%;float:left;border:1px solid rgb(0,0,0);margin-right:1em;margin-top:-1.2em;" src="https://image.ibb.co/dzhBtc/image2.jpg"]
[img style="width:31%;float:left;border:1px solid rgb(0,0,0);margin-right:1em;margin-top:-2.4em;" src="https://image.ibb.co/i1ALmx/image3.jpg"]
[/div]
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Post by Bailey on May 13, 2018 1:23:13 GMT
I am posting this information here rather than in the actual thread where I noticed it because it is off-topic from the other thread.
In this post the member has split another member's post into sections in order to comment on each section. I do this myself on occasions and is not unusual to see. But only the first split section contains the author's name. It might be safe to assume the other sections refer to the original author but in some cases it might not, as I have multi-quoted various members in a single post before. So for the sake of clarity, if you need to split a quote into sections and you want the readers to be clear as to who is saying what, you can simply add the author's username to the opening quote tag in BBcode mode of the post editor. [quote author="@username"]......So if you split one of my posts, for example, the subsequent spilt sections should have author="@bailey" in the opening quote tag. If you are not comfortable editing bbcode, then you still have the option to attribute the quote to the author outside the quote tags in your normal text. If you have multiple split quotes you can simply copy/paste the credit either in the bbcode, as described above, or outside the quote tags in the normal text. It shouldn't take anymore than about 10 seconds or less to credit 5 or 6 split quotes Hope this will make who is saying what in split quotes, especially when splitting quotes from various members, more reader friendly (putting quoted text in quote tags without saying who the author is, is amateurish imho and in my experience is frowned upon in the web site development community) |
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Post by Tpgettys on Aug 25, 2018 4:59:21 GMT
Hi Bailey, I am curious how you accomplished the View Enlargement in your gallery posts. I have been trying to replicate it, but with limited success.
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Post by Bailey on Aug 25, 2018 11:58:38 GMT
Hi Tpgettys, You can use the url to an existing enlargement you have already uploaded in "Show Your Work" or wherever else on the www or upload an enlarged version separately. These instructions are based on uploading via imgbb an image you want to use as an enlargement for your gallery photo. 1. Create a new post in a thread somewhere or edit an existing one. It doesn't matter. 2. Go into BBCODE mode of the post editor (button near botton left corner) 3. Upload the enlarged image via imgbb like normal. 4. Copy and paste into Notepad or any text editor (if you use the clipboard, it might get lost) the url of the enlargement from the code generated by the upload to imgbb 5. Cancel out of the the post editor. It's purpose was solely to upload an image to use as the enlarement and copy its imgbb url 6. Upload a "thumbnail" version of your image to your gallery 7. Before submitting the new image to your gallery, add the url you copied in step 4 to the comments field of your gallery image with an explanatory note. Something like (without the curly brackets) [url={url from step 4}]View Enlargement[/url] (without the curly brackets)8. Submit the new image to your gallery and when visitors click the gallery thumbnail, they will be presented with the default gallery "enlargement" with the link to the imgbb enlargement in the comments field for them to click if they wish.
If you already have a url to the image you want to use as the enlargement for your gallery image, start at step 6 and add the url to the bbcode in step 7
Hope this helps |
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Post by Tpgettys on Aug 25, 2018 15:16:41 GMT
Thank you for the detailed steps bailey.
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Post by Bailey on Aug 26, 2018 5:38:03 GMT
Thank you for the detailed steps bailey. No problem In case the instructions are not quite clear to someone, hopefully these screenshots will help explain. Below are the screen shots for when I set up the "View Enlargement" link in my Wineglass Bay panorama in my gallery.  You can see here the "View Enlargement" link (in red above the Comments label) when visitors first click the gallery thumbnail.  In the comments field, add the bbcode for the link to the enlargement's url as per my instructions in my previous post.
This the imgbb enlargement that is displayed when a visitor clicks the newly created "View Enlargment" link. (The panorama is clearer in my gallery.)
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Post by blackmutt on Aug 27, 2018 2:23:00 GMT
My opinion only. I find the posts with the heavy black framing and such distracting and jarring. I never click on them to enlarge them either. To me a photo should rest on it’s own merits without “extras”
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Post by Bailey on Aug 27, 2018 3:55:00 GMT
No problem blackmutt
I have also received feedback where people have actually liked viewing photos on black backgrounds. In an environment like this it's not realistic to expect everyone to like exactly the same thing. If we did, it would be a pretty boring forum  .
I also don't always click to view enlargements. Imgbb soften thumbnails for some reason but not the enlargements, so if the thumbnail looks ok I don't always click it.
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Post by Tpgettys on Oct 19, 2018 1:42:23 GMT
I finally got around to trying this out and it worked like a charm! I also found that if you are using imgbb.com to insert your image into your gallery, you can make the full-size image viewable by changing your existing process by one step! The URL embedded by imgbb.com contains both a link to a preview and to the full-size image. When you embed an image in an ordinary post the preview is displayed, but the user can click it to view the full-size image. This doesn't happen when adding an image to your gallery, but you can use this work-around to make it happen. After you click the Add Image button in your gallery and use the Add image to post via imgbb.com button, you see something like this: ![]() As usual you cut&paste the text between [img] and [/img] into the Image URL field, resulting in something like this: To make the full-size image available, all you have to do is replace [img][/img] with "View Enlargement", something like this: |
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