New Forum - Quick n Dirty Tips

w00t! I got a sticky! YAY! So happy...

Hmm. Well, I hope we will become able to set up forum passwords at some time. Sorry, but I'm not comfortable using my account password on a non-secure site.

Anyway, this is a great guide, and PK, there's lots that's sticky about you, or so I've heard.

New info: The time edit window is GONE! I just edited a few of my guides that were a YEAR old! Wheee!

Yup. Noticed that in the AE forum. We can also delete our posts now. Very happy days.

Highlight text in the editor, press Ctrl+I to italicize it.

Highlight text in the editor, press Ctrl+B to make it bold.

Highlight text in the editor, press Ctrl+U to underline it.

Highlighting any text will apply whatever you change using the WYSIWIG editor, for that text only. For example, if I wanted to change the color of a word to yellow, I could manually type the tags myself, or I highlight it (you can highlight text by holding down the Shift key and using the arrow keys, or by left-clicking and dragging the mouse across the text, or even by double-clicking a word), select the color menu and choose yellow. This works for text size, color, typeface (bold, italic, underline), even

Quote:

quoted text,

etc, and again, it applies only to the highlighted text, so you don't have to worry about your entire post coming out yellow or bold or really big.

Also, it doesn't matter if you capitalize your tags or leave them lowercase. They work both ways.

Ctrl+A selects all text in a window.

Ctrl+C copies all highlighted text.

Ctrl+X cuts all highlighted text. This text is not deleted, it is saved just like copied text is.

Ctrl+V pastes text into a window. If you have highlighted text, Ctrl+V will paste it over that highlighted text, not at the bottom or top of the text field.

Ctrl+Z is the "undo" shortcut. If you make a mistake and paste or type over something, or delete text accidentally, you can use Ctrl+Z to restore it. It has multiple "undo levels" so you can restore quite a bit of text.

Note, however, that "undo" does not store text which you have copied or cut. That is stored in your clipboard, which is the operating system's little scratch pad specifically designed to store copied or cut things (text, pictures, hyperlinks, etc.). So if you copy or cut one paragraph, then copy or cut a second paragraph without pasting the first paragraph, that first paragraph will be lost. Always remember to paste what you've copied or cut before copying or cutting something else, or use an enhanced clipboard application, so you don't make a mistake and overwrite something that you were only trying to move around or change a little.

All emoticons (smilies) have keyboard shortcuts, too, so you can make a simply by typing : and ) together, for example.

Nice add, thanks Lumi.

Here's an interesting feature for the post padders:

Click Members List in the black bar up top. Then click the Posts heading to sort the names in order of highest post to lowest post counts. Now it's easier to see where you rank and how far you have to go to pass someone else.

Anyone that wants to add more color to their posts, might also want to try the CoH Forums Color Picker application that I made. Details are on this page.

Hey PK. I still have problems with these forums forgetting about what threads and/or posts I have read. Even if I logout and the cookies should be deleted. Is this a bug or am I just dense?

//Jack

Honestly, I think the boards are bugged, I have this same problem and it's frustrating. The only workaround that I've been able to find for this is just to keep my browser window open the whole time, and minimize it when I'm not using it. Then when I want to view the boards again, I bring it back up and hit refresh. This seems like a server side problem to me, like the board server isn't saving your viewed threads properly.

But.. But.. I'd like to shut down my computer once in awhile. My precious needs to sleep sometimes.

Ok. Thanks for the reply PK. You da man. But I think you knew that already.

//Jack

This is getting silly. I don't want to read the same posts over and over again. I shouldn't have to clear all the cookies everytime I log. Can't this be fixed?

//Jack

PM the mods, that's your only chance. I've just started using the "last post" triangle and then scrolling up myself.

I'm now thining it might be something on the users side, me in other words. But I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

//Jack

No it's not just you, several other have complained as well.

What I mean is maybe it's about the way you leave the thread, or the way you close down the forums.

//Jack

Aw, I thought this thread would have been about something else...


I keed, great guide! Definitely helped me out.

Thanks for the help PK. These forums have a tendency to crash on me too. The old one didn't do that, and is it crashes it's kinda hard to find time to log out. Well.. This is good enough. Thanks again PK.

//Jack

PK you are teh man!

Now that we're not limited to just 4 images per post, I'm going to go back and consolidate all my previous posts and splice/edit them into the very first post, that way everything is all together.

That's done, now I'm going to go in and reformat, perhaps grab and edit some new screenshots that don't look like crap.

This might take me a day or so to get it just how I want it.

I discovered a purely keystroke method to insert BB Code tags into the text of messages quite by accident several weeks ago while posting a reply on the forums.

I searched and searched and found no documentation for this anywhere in the forum FAQs or on this page. Does such documentation exist? Perhaps somewhere in the older posts fo this thread?

I'd like to know because, when I write, I hate to take my hands away from the key board to use the stinkin' mouse. I rather just use all the keystrokes I've memorized for editing text in most Windows-based text editors.

These keystrokes appear to work across browsers too so they must be driven by JavaScript the forum server loads into our browser. They work in IE or Firefox and maybe Opera and Safari too.

So because there appears to be no documention and in the hope of generating such documentation, I'll start.

CTRL+B inserts bold tags.
CTRL+I inserts italic tags
CTRL+U inserts underlines.

Are there others?

I know that browsers reserves certain keystrokes for browser functions, like opening tabs, bookmarking, reloading the page and so on. But are there others?

After posting this, I intend to experiment and see if I can discover others.

Nope, so far, that's all I found in the CTRL+[SOMETHING] sequences. Many of the rest are reserved for browser functions. Oh well.

I'd love a totally keyboard driven way to insert hyperlinks or bullleted or numbered lists.

Oh well.

Everyone should know that I have updated the guide. The smilies that I had linked to were obtained by taking a SCREEN SHOT of them from my previous forum editor application. I have now found the SOURCE FILES and original images, so I was able to upload them.

Mr. Yellow lives again, back in his original quality again!