Just in case OZ is still avoiding the Politics forum

[MsGuy]

MsGuy, on 21 Feb 2014 - 11:55 PM, said:

Is there a clever person here who can tell me how to attach a link to the text of a post? I have tried my usual method of trying out every random thing I can think of for several months but so far, no joy.[/size]

Lookin replies:

Not me, that's for sure. Up till a few months ago, the way to do it was to (1) highlight the word you wanted to be a hot link, (2) click the link icon in the toolbar, (3) paste the URL you wanted to link to in the box that popped up, and (4) click OK. You'd then have a hot link that would open the page you wanted it to. But, starting a few months ago with one of the regular site 'upgrades', that process started working only intermittently. Sometimes the hot link would take me to the URL I pasted into the pop-up box, and sometimes the hot link would only take me back to the page I was posting on. Fingers crossed this glitch will be addressed in the forthcoming Upgrade No. 269.xvii.bt.42x rev. 7c.

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yeah, "take me back to the page I was posting on" is the best I can get out of the system too.

Time to those Indian programmers awake , OZ.

Of course you could always give an American programmer like Daddy your AdMin passwords and let him loose on your code.

[TotallyOz]

So sorry for the late reply. I am in NYC till Mid March in a very intensive working environment. I thought I would have a bit more time than I did when I agreed to the month but I am a bit overwhelmed and behind in life.

I think part of this has to do with whether or not your "light switch" in on or off at the top. It will allow for more editing. I just tested the link with my word agreed and it worked for me. Can you tell me if I am not understanding the issue?

[lookin]

I think part of this has to do with whether or not your "light switch" in on or off at the top. It will allow for more editing. I just tested the link with my word agreed and it worked for me. Can you tell me if I am not understanding the issue?

When I click your 'agreed' link it takes me to the BoyToy home page. While I find much that is agreeable there, I don't notice anything that relates directly to your link.

Mind you, I'm not complaining.

Flipping the 'light switch' would probably be a good start to diagnosing what's going on, but trying to turn us all into HTML jockies might ruffle a few feathers.

[MsGuy]

Light switch?

I don't see no stinking light switch!

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Son of a bitch. It worked!

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OK, try following magic formula and see if it works for you:

1) Highlight and copy the web address to be linked.

2) Highlight the words that are to anchor the hot link.

3) Click on the link icon to get to link menu.

4) Paste address into URL box & click OK..

5) Post the post & check if the link works.

6) Celebrate.

Especially if the magic works twice in a row.

Come on now, celebration
Let's all celebrate and have a good time, yeah yeah
Celebration
We gonna celebrate and have a good time

[AdamSmith]

Tiny icon in upper left hand corner of the edit toolbar when you go to make a post.

[lookin]

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Son of a bitch. It worked!

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OK, try following magic formula and see if it works for you:

Looks like OZ's programmers fixed it, as I think your instructions are equivalent to the ones I posted and that have been working up until a week or so ago. I've been able to link successfully today, and didn't have to get anywhere near the 'light switch' to do it.

As I understand it, the light switch doesn't generate any new or different code. It just exposes the underlying HTML code that the more user-friendly edit menu generates. If that menu-generated code is faulty, the underlying HTML code will be faulty too. It's just that seeing the HTML code in raw form (you should pardon the expression) might allow the cognoscenti to diagnose what's going on.

There are still a few things that I can't get the user-friendly edit menu to do reliably and need to muck through the HTML code to fix, but only wearing galoshes and never sure of success.

For example, in case anyone is still reading, I've been having trouble posting and centering images lately. It turns out that the user-friendly edit menu is generating a size tag rather than an image tag. So I can fix it with HTML code behind the light switch, but somewhere I think there's a glitch in the edit menu as the size tag is there where it shouldn't be and it didn't generate itself.

[MsGuy]

Looks like OZ's programmers fixed it, as I think your instructions are equivalent to the ones I posted and that have been working up until a week or so ago. I've been able to link successfully today, and didn't have to get anywhere near the 'light switch' to do it.

As usual, you're right. Several months ago I must have done something wrong ( probably copied a URL wrong), got frustrated and fell back on my 'try some else' method of solving computer problems (which in this case led me deeper into error) and finally randomly stumbled back to the correct way w/o realizing I was back where I started.

And (BLUSH) got all excited and failed to re-read your most excellent post before rushing to post the news. Probably your post put the solution in my subconscious in the first place.

Oh well.

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WTF??

For example, in case anyone is still reading, I've been having trouble posting and centering images lately. It turns out that the user-friendly edit menu is generating a size tag rather than an image tag. So I can fix it with HTML code behind the light switch, but somewhere I think there's a glitch in the edit menu as the size tag is there where it shouldn't be and it didn't generate itself.

So why did your last paragraph just change from very light type to regular type? Riddle me that; I swear I din't do nothing.

[lookin]

Several months ago I must have done something wrong ( probably copied a URL wrong), got frustrated and fell back on my 'try some else' method of solving computer problems (which in this case led me deeper into error) and finally randomly stumbled back to the correct way w/o realizing I was back where I started.

I'm pretty sure the link function was hinky during that time, so you may have been doing everything correctly without bringing home the bacon. I know I was doing links the same way I always did, but couldn't get a hot link to anything but a BoyToy site page. Seems to be working OK now, though.

So why did your last paragraph just change from very light type to regular type? Riddle me that; I swear I din't do nothing.

My guess is that, when you copied the text from my post, the HTML color tags got stripped off. So, rather than the light grey color I used for a please-feel-free-to-skip-this-as-it's-deadly-dull-final-thought, the regular black text showed up instead. In the user-friendly edit menu and box that OZ kindly provides, these HTML tags don't show up. You have to go behind the light switch to see them. So it's really hard to know whether you've copied them or not.

I know it might seem odd for two grown men to be talking about HTML codes in a public forum, but the whole concept is really interesting, at least to me. With nothing but 0's and 1's flying through cyberspace, it's kind of amazing that someone thought to make up codes that would tell a browser to show the next snippet of text in bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, color, different font, different size, or almost any combination thereof.

(Might be fun to flip the light switch and look at the underlying HTML code that was necessary to render the previous sentence with all its frippery.)

Easy-to-use menus like the one we have here can take all the tedium out of formatting and linking and embedding and such but the browser still relies on the underlying HTML codes to display what's intended. It's fine when it all works perfectly, but miss even one little character and all hell can break 0110110001101111011011110111001101100101.

[MsGuy]

(Might be fun to flip the light switch and look at the underlying HTML code that was necessary to render the previous sentence with all its frippery.)

Been there, done that, didn't look at all like fun to me. I'll stick with the menus, thank you very much. Being able to set pictures side by side or to center them would be nice, but the thought of learning something new at my age makes me slightly nauseous. Besides even if I took the trouble to figure it out, I'd just forget again unless I used it every day.

On the other hand, I did figure out how to use the bracketed quote/unquote code to create a quote box when I wanted to quickly pull a small passage out of a long post. (Also good for quoting from separate posts; I never did figure out how to use the 'multiple quote' option ).

I'm guessing that's a limited use of HTML code, right? Yea for me! Random efforts conquer all!

[AdamSmith]

behind the light switch

Sounds a bit titillating, and slightly verboten.

[MsGuy]

Sorry, AS, but unless Ms. Chambers is a particularly attractive pre-op, I'd have to take a pass on that.

[AdamSmith]

unless Ms. Chambers is a particularly attractive pre-op

You know better than to put notions in my head.

[lookin]

Being able to set pictures side by side or to center them would be nice, but the thought of learning something new at my age makes me slightly nauseous. Besides even if I took the trouble to figure it out, I'd just forget again unless I used it every day.

Once you've learned how to use one bracketed HTML function, you've learned how to use them all. (Well, nearly.) Center/uncenter works just like quote/unquote. So does left/unleft and right/unright. My one suggestion for learning new tricks is to do so only when there's a piece of meat waiting for you; i. e,.some kind of payoff. In my opinion, learning for learning's sake is highly overrated.

(Also good for quoting from separate posts; I never did figure out how to use the 'multiple quote' option ).

I'm guessing that's a limited use of HTML code, right? Yea for me! Random efforts conquer all!

Exactly so. Once you've clicked all the 'multi quote' boxes for the posts you want to quote, there's one final undocumented trick you need to know. There will be a black box at the bottom of the screen that says something like 'Reply to 2 quoted post(s)'. You have to actually click that black box in order for the quotes to show up in your post window. Then you're ready to respond to them.

PS: Not to intrude on OZ's busy schedule, but it used to be possible to use the edit menu to click on an image, and then click on the 'center' icon to center it. No more. The 'center' icon is greyed out and unavailable for centering images. That's why I've been forced to use brute-force HTML tags to center an image. I'm not complaining, as the workaround is not tedious, but the edit menu is definitely in need of some fixin' if its functionality is to be restored.

PPS: For reasons beyond my ken, it's possible to use the multi-quote function to quote from separate posts, but not multiple quotes from the same post. That's why you've had to learn the quote/unquote trick. There's no reason the edit menu couldn't be set up to allow multiple quotes from within a single post. It just hasn't been programmed to do so. The edit menu has been through at least a million revisions since I've been infesting the site and each revision results in behaviors that weren't there before, and the loss of some that were. It would be nice if the programmers would take the time to test the edit menu before releasing it to the masses, but no doubt that would only delay OZ's next project.