HTML Sandbox 2008

HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language. It's a set of simple commands used to format the text of your posts, add images, or links, or change the appearance.

URL is Uniform Resource Locator. It's the name of the page or the picture that you see, the www.http:// stuff. You'll need to use the URL to make links and post pictures.

Quotation Marks Quotes have to be used around the URLs for web pages and images on Free Republic. Some systems do not require this. Ours does.

Once the Free Republic software detects an HTML tag in your post, it will assume the entire thing was written for HTML. This means it will eliminate paragraphs and line breaks that you used to clarify your writing. In order to prevent that, I'll start with the two simplest tags, and . When you use html tags, they disappear when the post is pasted to the board, so don't worry if they look funny or if your post seems to run on.

This is the break tag. 
It tells the computer to end the line and start a new one. 
Just type it where you want the line to end.

It tells the computer to end the line, insert a blank one, then start a new line.

The rest of the tags have to be used with an on tag and an off tag. This is simple enough. One of the most commonly used tags is the italic tag . This tag turns the italics on. When you want the italics to end, turn them off by using the forward slash with the appropriate command, in this case, .

Commonly used tags:
 paragraph
 line break
These tags are not used in pairs.

Commonly used pairs:
 italics
 bold characters
 underline
This makes the font red. Orange,blue,green,purple,and yellow also work.
<center> </center>

You can use 1,2,3,4, or 5. The tags automatically insert a blank line between the headline and your next paragraph.

Sarcasm tag
</sarc> This is the sarcasm tag. It is not a real HTML tag. It is used to mark your witty repartee so that everyone will know you are making a funny. Type an ampersand - & then lt; then /sarc. An & and gt makes the other carat >.

How to create a link:
<a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/home.htm">www.Free Republic.com</a>
A means anchor. H ref means horizontal reference. It's called horizontal because the computer is going across the web to a different page. There are also vertical links that can go to specific points on the same page. What comes after the a href= is where the computer will go. The horizontal reference is the complete URL of the page you want to link. It's in the navigation bar at the top of your web browser. Highlight it and copy it. Make sure you get all of it. Some URLs are surprisingly long, and if you miss some of the URL, the link might not work.
You can type anything between the <a href=></a> parts.
www.Free Republic.com
Click here.
abc12345
All of these links go to the same page, I just typed different things between <a href=></a> tags.

How to add images to your post:
<img src=></img>
The img tags tell the computer to find and insert a picture.
These tags insert this wonderful image from Rush Limbaugh's website:
<img src="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_062807/content/01125113.Par.4584.ImageFile.jpg""height=218""width=285"></img>

You need to know the URL of the picture to do this. You can see the picture's URL when you put your cursor on the picture and right click the mouse. You see a small box with "properties" at the bottom. Left click on "properties" and you get a dialog box with the image URL and dimensions. It says Address: next to the URL, with (URL) underneath. Copy the URL and paste it after your img src= tag. Make sure you get all of the URL for the picture. There isn't a lot of space for the URL and sometimes they are very long. The image Size and Dimensions are beneath the URL. Free Republic allocates memory for each image, and if it doesn't know the dimensions of the image, it will allocate more memory than needed. It tells you the width, then the height of the picture. You don't have to tell the computer that the height of that image was 218 and the width was 285, but it saves memory and memory costs money.

This is called a hotlink. The picture is actually on another computer, but we see it here. This causes the other computer to use it's memory and machinery to provide the image. Some sites prevent it, or object to it. You can't hotlink an image from any of Yahoo's GeoCities pages, for example. Yahoo prevents it.

Do Not Cut And Paste List.
Some websites have forbidden us to copy and paste their material, including images. There have been lawsuits over this. The software will mostly prevent you from using the material that has been blocked, but not always. There are also some image sources that are not allowed on the list. Please don't use them. Lawsuits suck.
Link to the Do Not Cut And Paste List

What does one of these actually look like?

Since I post the Astronomy Picture of the Day thread, I believe that I would not be stepping on anyone's toes if I used one of the threads to illustrate how an HTML post is created. There is also the shameless self promotion aspect of it, but what the hell . . .

Here's the source code for today's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each item is explained in italics.
<center> Centers what follows.
<a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/ISS_STS124_michelberger.jpg"> Creates a link.
<img src="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/ISS_STS124_michelberger_lab.jpg""height=597""width=800"> Posts an image.
</img> Closes the image.
</a> Closes the link.
 Adds a line break.
Chasing the ISS Changes the font to bold and adds a line break.
Credit & Copyright: Jürgen Michelberger Closes the bold font.
</center> Closes the centering function.
 Inserts a paragraph break.
Explanation: "Explanation" will appear in the bold font.
Bathed in sunlight, the International Space Station (ISS) arced through the evening sky above the town of Lauffen in southern Germany on May 31st. The timing of the bright passage was about 10 minutes after the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-124 mission from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in the southeastern US. Of course, Discovery was headed toward an orbital rendezvous with the ISS. In chasing after the space station, the shuttle also made a pass over Lauffen just 21 minutes after launch. With a camera fixed to a tripod, astronomer Jürgen Michelberger recorded both magnificent machines streaking overhead in two different time exposures, each about 2 minutes long, and merged them in this composite view. Parallax causes the paths of the ISS (right) and Discovery (near center) to seem to diverge as they were at very different altitudes. Stars (and bright planets) leave two, separated, short trails. The brief, flaring track of an Iridium satellite and faint dotted trail of a passing airplane are also visible. A close inspection will reveal a dim reddish track, the jettisoned external fuel tank, just left of Discovery. Placing your cursor over the picture should help identify some of the features.

It looks like this:

Chasing the ISS
Credit & Copyright: Jürgen Michelberger

Explanation: Bathed in sunlight, the International Space Station (ISS) arced through the evening sky above the town of Lauffen in southern Germany on May 31st. The timing of the bright passage was about 10 minutes after the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-124 mission from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in the southeastern US. Of course, Discovery was headed toward an orbital rendezvous with the ISS. In chasing after the space station, the shuttle also made a pass over Lauffen just 21 minutes after launch. With a camera fixed to a tripod, astronomer Jürgen Michelberger recorded both magnificent machines streaking overhead in two different time exposures, each about 2 minutes long, and merged them in this composite view. Parallax causes the paths of the ISS (right) and Discovery (near center) to seem to diverge as they were at very different altitudes. Stars (and bright planets) leave two, separated, short trails. The brief, flaring track of an Iridium satellite and faint dotted trail of a passing airplane are also visible. A close inspection will reveal a dim reddish track, the jettisoned external fuel tank, just left of Discovery. Placing your cursor over the picture should help identify some of the features.

It's posted here.

Dirtbag	Means of assistance	Reason he hates America
William Ayers	friend	1960s mental case
Frank Davis	Mentor	Communist

What are you trying to do to the list? I like the border and the colors, but my personal taste leans toward the table format. I'd try something like this...

What you suggest would certainly look nice but certain 'table data' boxes would have much more material, thus expanding the total length of the post.

I wanted to double space each item but it would also have been twice as long that way and it was already huge.

Take a look at my Profile page..I'm familiar with html.

Dirtbag	Means of assistance	Reason he hates America
William Ayers	friend	1960s mental case
George Soros [slumlord undergoing trial]	Supporter	Son, Jonathan Soros, an attorney and finanier, recently promoted to deputy manager of Soros Fund Management, is personally involved with Move On. org's activities.
POTLATCH	GIFMAKER	WONDERFUL, FABULOUS, EXTRAORDINARY, SUPERCALIFRAGILISTEXPEALIDOCIOUS, CAN'T REPEAT IT ENOUGH, OVER AND OVER AND OVER, SNICKER, SNORT, CHOKE, GASP, LOL

I should add that you can run the list as a table, center align all the data, and have one item of data for each row. I won't use your background, but is this something like what you wanted?

OBAMA’S SUPPORTERS READ LIKE A LIST OF WHO’S WHO AMONG RACISTS, THUGS,
MUSLIMS, MARXIST AND AMERICAN HATERS OF THE WORLD.

>William Ayers (Weatherman Underground bomber, unrepentant domestic terrorist)

Frank Davis (Member Communist Party USA, Early mentor to Obama)

>Jeremiah Wright (Black Liberation militant, racist, and Pastor)

Tony Rezko (Corrupt Financier, ties to Terror Financing)

>Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam Leader, racist, anti-American)

Raila Ordinga (Fundamental Islamic Candidate, Kenya, Obama’s Cousin)

This was cellspacing=4, cellpadding=3.

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