I recommend getting one of the many 'typing macro' tools. You create a bit of text you'd like to have inserted when you are writing, like the beginning and ending 'tags' for the forum 'quote' commands ( "quote" & "/quote" each enclosed by "[" & "]"). Then, in the 'macro app, assign a unique sequence of letters that will 'trigger the app to insert that text. I have ones set up to insert...
CODE
[quote][/quote], [color=green][b]name[/b][/color], <[url=TheURL][color=red][b]linkText[/b][/color][/url]>, and several others, some even for certain smilies
Then, when I want to insert a link to something, I just type the unique 'code' and the little app insert that last bit of text above and continue writing the sentence to explain whatever the subject is. Since I've already copied (to the clipboard, 'command-c') the actual URL from the site's window and I have some text in that sentence that I can use for the link text, all I need to do is double click the "TheURL" part and press command-v to insert the URL. Then, I'll select the pieces of text in the sentence, usually the words right after the link stuff, command-x, double-click the "linkText" part and do another command-v. Sounds time consuming, but it's really not after a few uses and it can all be done in the "Quick Reply" box at the bottom of the thread window. No need to make the browser load another page or display the posts in a different manner. I use Typinator, but there are several others. THese apps really make typing easier for people like me who have only two or three fingers that have any typing "skills!"
BTW, the forum software prevents you displaying any tags in a 'normal' message, you'll need to wrap any examples in the "code" tags, which prevents the software from parsing them text into what
it thinks it should look like. The other most often mistake is to use more than one tag, like bold and italic but insert the 'closing' tags in the wrong order. The tags need to be "nested," or 'closed in reverse order of how they were entered. That doesn't mean all the tags have to be together, at the beginning
or the end. You can make an entire sentence bold but have only a couple of words italicized, for example. Just remember to close the tags in the proper places.
The more you try/use the 'code' the faster you'll learn them. Their basically a subset of the standard html tags, but marked with square brackets instead of "<" & ">".
