Couple of tips on learning how to do things at TS ( and some other forums ):
1. If there is an "Edit" button available on a post, just click it to see the 'raw' message. You can then see exactly what was required to create the message.
2. Most forums use a "Quote" button to create a reply window with the 'quoted' message in a separate box. That will also show you exactly how the message was created. At TS the "Quote" button does something else, still not sure, I don't quote messages that way.
3. Play with the buttons in the "Reply" window. However, this may not help if you don't know what to insert in the various text boxes...
4. Since all the link and image insertion methods use the same formats, get and use a 'macro/typing' app to do all the repetitive work for you. I don't care for the way the software opens little windows asking for a url when I want to make a link or insert an image. And I also format all links in a standard ABD format. So I created a 'macro in <
Typinator> that spits out the following:
CODE
<[url=TheURL][color=red][b]linkText[/b][/color][/url]>
when I type a
period, a "t", an "s", and an "l" ( the letter L ). This makes all my links
bold,
red and enclosed by two angle brackets; "<" and ">". All that with just 4 characters typed ( I'm nothing, if not lazy! ). Of course, I still have to copy/paste the URL into the "TheURL" area ( note: double-clicking a sequential group of letters will select the whole group of letters, that's why I did
not use "The URL" as the URL 'placeholder'. ) And I can double-click "linkText" and enter anything I want as the text that shows up as the link in the message.
Likewise, I type a
period, a "t", an "s", ( are we seeing a trend here? ) and an "i" when I want to insert an image. And Typinator spits out:
CODE
[img]http://www.MacOSphere.com/~ChaffinJ/images/IMAGEname[/img]
This is even easier than a link because all I need to do is paste in the last part of the image name after double-clicking "IMAGEname". Since the place I store most of my uploaded images is the MacOSphere.com site, I don't worry about different URL domains. "Lazy" means keep it simple!
One 'trick' is to always use a domain/site that allows linking to your images. Many 'free' services don't allow that as you've discovered at Tripod.
Another 'user-friendly' action is to always edit the image size down to something like 600 pixels wide. Many people don't set their browser windows to full screen width, so they may be forced to scroll horizontally to see you image if it's still 2048 pixels wide!
Most people dislike horizontal scrolling, for some reason. One nice feature of the new TS software is that an extra wide image does not stretch the whole thread. It now only stretches the post with the wide image. Nice!
