FR Posting Style Book - format for replying (We seem to be slipping)

Me, Myself and BJungNan | April 9, 2005 | BJungNan

[BJungNan]

Lately there seems to be some slippage of what has been for years the common style for replying to posts. In the interest of FR Stylebook maintenance, here is what has been proper style on replying to comments in a thread.

The common form for replies is as follows:

1. Quote the person you are replying to with italics (if you are replying to someone specifically and what they said).
2. Seperate with a paragraph mark.
3. Show your reply in regular text

Example:
Even after five years (or so) of reading FR, I still find myself amazed at the quality of discussion and the wealth of information, especially posts from the many experts that are members of FR. Who would have thought we would have experts in typefonts of all things (to Dan Rather's chagrin).

You sure have that right BJungNan. Jim and FR are the greatest!

---

Placing the comments of the person you are replying to in quote marks or in Bold may get the job done, but really it is not common style. At least not to my FR eyes. Those using quotes perhaps don't know html but it is really easy. FR is where many people learned html. Somewhere on here is an html sandbox (perhaps someone can offer up that link).

[ConservativeLawyer]

I spend a lot of time scrolling back up to see what was said in a lot of posts.

You don't have to scroll up to see what was said in the post that is being replied to. You can just click on the "To #" at the bottom of the reply post and it will zip you right to the post to which it replies. Saves time.

Having said that, I also agree BJungNan.

[ForGod'sSake]

Yes, but there is one thing FReepers are not and that is they are not lazy.

Wanna bet? I got some heartburn over a similar post:

DANCING THREADS AND OTHER STUFF(VANITY!)

FGS

[supercat]

A few more goodies:

• Tables have cellpadding and cellspacing properties which set the amount of space between cells, and the amount of margin within each cell. These properties may also be applied to individual table rows or items.
• Tables have bgcolor and background properties; the former takes a color (either as a name, e.g. "white", or as a six-digit hex number preceded by a pound sign, e.g. "#FFFFFF"), while the latter takes a url which points to a picture. If you are going to use the latter, it is often good to use the former as well to establish the 'dominant' color of the picture before the image itself is loaded. This is especially important if the picture itself has a dark background.
• Tables can be nested within tables. Although this may at times seem confusing, it can also simplify things. The bar-graph example above, e.g., uses nested tables. It would be possible to do such a thing without nesting tables (using colspan, below) but it would be a pain.
• Sometimes tables need to have cells that span multiple rows. The rowspan and colspan properties are useful for this. E.g.

  A	B	CD
  E	FG		H L P
  IJ MN		K
  		O

  Note that if a cell uses colspan, the included cells should be skipped [there are no [td] items for them]. If a cell uses rowspan, the included cell(s) should be skipped from succeeding rows.

  Although it's possible to combine rowspan and colspan in such a way as to produce malformed tables, the results are not predictable or consistent.

  Normal	BONK1!
  BONK2!

• Sometimes it's useful to have a table with an exterior border but no interior lines. This can be done using the rules property, though I don't know all the variations. One shown here, though, is rules=none

  Hey	there
  1	2

• If no widths are specified for a table or its cells, the table will be as narrow it can be without causing any word wrap. If word wrap is unavoidable, the rules get complicated. In the event that certain parts of the table have their width manually set, browsers will generally try to make sense of the rest, but different browsers follow different rules.

  A typical behavior would be to allocate the manually-set widths, then allocate any 'minimum' widths necessary to avoid word wrap, and then allocate what's left. As an example:

  Hey

  This is a very long cell

  OK

  This is another very long cell. Longer, even, than the first.

  In this example, the table width is fixed at 400, and the gray cell is fixed at 100. The other cells are adjusted to try to fit what can be accommodated.

• 1	2
  3	4

  A table may use the properties align=left or align=right to allow placement as a really cool floating object like the one shown at right. Such tables should generally only be used if they're fairly small, since strange things can happen if they're so wide that things don't really fit. Used sparingly, however, they can help conserve vertical space.
• And finally...

  E

  VEN such cool things as drop-caps can be produced if one uses tables successfully. The effectiveness of drop caps can be enhanced using other style properties, but they are unfortunately not allowed in FreeRepublic. Despite the limitations, the effet can still be pleasing. This paragraph is enclosed in a fixed-width table to ensure that it is long enough to demonstrate wrapping around the table.

Hope you like those goodies.

[Misty Memory]

Thanks for the link! Does this work with plain ol' HTML or only with CSS?

[BJungNan]

You don't have to scroll up to see what was said in the post that is being replied to. You can just click on the "To #" at the bottom of the reply post and it will zip you right to the post to which it replies. Saves time.

Is that what that is for. Dang, that tip made this whole thread worth it! Thanks!

[BJungNan]

Now that was amazing, italicizing the JPEG

[BJungNan]

Seeing all these html tricks I'm wondering if this thread is going to have unintended consequences. Everyone is going to be adding cells and whatnot to their posts now (don't blame me).

[supercat]

Now that was amazing, italicizing the JPEG

The more general trick, overlaying text on graphics, can be handy even though FR's disallowance of 'style' properties means such efforts can be broken by user font-size selections.

[mjtobias]

Like dis?

I always used < blockquote >

[mjtobias]

Like dis...

"chartreuse with blue-purple edges on a crinkly puce background"

I'm getting a headache just thinking about that!!

[dixiechick2000]

"You can also control the width of the tag by adding a width tag as either a percentage or length:"

Posting in the correct format....

Thanks ever so much!
I've learned three things today!
THAT'S a good day for me.

"What about the thickness ?"

I don't think I wanna go there. ;o)

[John Lenin]

I was going to say I was thick headed too but it might come the wrong way. Hard headed is more like it. Oh, nevermind.

[dixiechick2000]

That's wonderful!

NOW...show me how.

[dixiechick2000]

LOL!

You're a trip. ;o)

[Quix]

Have yet to find a concise, clear table tutorial--if you have one--would love to have it.

THX.

[Musket]

All the great posts on this thread and not one Marquee! What's wrong with you people? Marquee Rules!!!

[Musket]

All the great posts on this thread and not one Marquee! What's wrong with you people? Marquee Rules!!!

Sadly it doesn't seem to work with the FR servers. Oh well. Nevermind.

[baseballmom]

You don't have to scroll up to see what was said in the post that is being replied to. You can just click on the "To #" at the bottom of the reply post and it will zip you right to the post to which it replies. Saves time.

FReeping all this time, and I've NEVER noticed the "To #" option !!! I learn something new everyday. Thanks

[Alamo-Girl]

I always used < blockquote >

I'm a lazy typist. DIR only takes three keystrokes. LOLOL!

Thank you for your reply!