Frequently Asked Questions - how to use babble

Q. How do I format my posts? What formatting options are available?

A. There are a number of formatting options available, and you can access them by clicking on the icons beneath your comment window. Here is a list of them, and how they work:

Bold - Highlight the text you wish to make bold, and click on this icon.

Italics - Highlight the text you wish to make italic, and click on this icon.

Underline - Highlight the text you wish to underline and click on this icon.  THIS ONE DOESN'T WORK, UNFORTUNATELY. 

Strikethrough - THIS ONE DOESN'T WORK, UNFORTUNATELY. Highlight the text you wish to cross out and click on this icon.

Insert a link/URL - Highlight the text in your comment window that you wish to make into a link to another web page. In the window that pops up, insert the link/URL into the "Link URL" field (including the http://). Choose "Open in a new window" from the drop-down menu. Ignore the final two fields and click on "insert".

Remove a link/URL - Highlight the entire text that has a link/URL attached to it. Click this icon, and the URL will be removed from the text.

Insert Image - Copy the online location of an image anywhere on the internet. (Not the web page, but the URL for the image itself - usually ends in .jpg or .gif or some other image file type.) Click inside the comment window where you want the image to be inserted. Click the Insert Image icon. In the window that pops up, paste the URL for the image in the first field (including the "http://"), and then click the "insert" button at the bottom of the window.

Text Colour - THIS ONE ALSO DOES NOT WORK. Highlight the text you wish to make a certain colour. Click the little triangle arrow next to the icon, then click on the desired colour from the options that pop up.

Edit HTML Source - Sorry folks, I'm not sure what this one does. I'll get back to you on this one at some point!

Insert Horizontal Ruler - click on the space where you want to insert a horizontal line across the entire width of your post. Then click the icon.

Insert Emoticon - click on this icon and then choose the emoticon you wish to insert into your post by clicking on it in the pop-up window.

Paste as Plain Text - Copy text from elsewhere (a document, or another web page) to your clipboard. Click in the comment window where you want to insert the text. Click the Paste as Plain Text icon, and the text will be inserted with the formatting removed.

Q. How do I put quotes inside a quote box if I'm not quoting someone's post?

A. Unfortunately, you have to write the tags yourself.  So, if you want to put "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in a quote box, you will need to use quote tags before and after the text you want to see in the quote box, like this:

[ quote ] A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. [ /quote ]

Please note: for the tags to take effect, you must remove the spaces between the square brackets and "quote" and "/quote".  I have put in the spaces so that the tags do not automatically format the text in the example.

We will apparently have an automatic quote feature added to our automatic editing icons at some point, but until then, we will have to do it ourselves.

UNDERLINING

Unfortunately, the shortcut editing button for underlining doesn't work for babblers (only for moderators - don't ask me why, I have no idea).

But you can still underline if you type the tags in yourself manually, similar to the quote tags I mentioned above.

Before and after the text you wish to underline, type these tags (removing the spaces):

[ u] text you want underlined [/ u]