Adding links to your comments
A Copublisher who made the very common mistake of not formatting a link correctly in a comment recently asked if there was some way around this problem. Rather than get off topic in the forum where the question was asked, I've decided to answer his question here.
The specific problem was that links were added without the 'http://' prefix, and did not link correctly when clicked. Well, the standards the internet is based on require that "http://" at the beginning so that we knows what kind of link you're talking about. There are several different ways a link can start, the most common being "ftp://" to connect to an FTP file server, and "mailto:" to link to an email address.
Those are just the rules; every web browser I've seen follows them strictly. While it's possible to write programs that correct bad HTML entered by users, they're not perfect, as they have to guess at what you were trying to type. Also, they encourage bad coding. For these reasons very few sites use programs that correct bad html.
I'd guess that this - malformed links - is among the most common mistakes made with HTML. I've just added a little guide to including links to the form Copublishers use to post comments, I'll paste it below as well. Note that if you have "autoformat" selected on your comment, any URL (for example, http://www.narconews.com) pasted into your comment will automatically become a clickable link. Once you post your comment, you can't change or delete it, so be sure to hit "preview" first, and try out all the links, before hitting that "Post" button.
Here is the message now attached to the comment form:
To create a link in your text, use the following format:<a href="http://www.narconews.com">Narco News</a>Note: if you do not start your link with "http://", it will not link correctly.
(results in text Narco News linked to url http://www.narconews.com)
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Auto-format is easier
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Jeff SimpsonI stand corrected
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Dan Feder"We're all in it together, kid" - Archibald Tuttle
(BTW, 'http://' still required in autoformat)
format about format
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Al Giordano...but each time I try to show the code I use it simply reverts to implementing that code, hiding the commands.
How do we non-techy types explain that?
Turn off auto-format
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Jeff SimpsonDan, I think you had this problem when you went back to edit the post.
aha!
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Al Giordanoto make something bold...
<b>bold text</b>
to make something italicized...
<i>italic text</i>
...and to indent text...
<blockquote>indented text</blockquote>
Hmmm.
re: Turn off auto-format
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Dan FederWell, I'm keeping the post the same, so that this discussion makes sense in context in the future. But on the form used to post a new comment, you should find the correct text.
more autoformat tricks
Submitted on March 9th, 2004 by Dan FederCheck out the autoformat guide that ships with scoop for more shortcuts that can be used in autoformat mode. There are tricks for doing *bold text* and _italic text_ and a few other things as well.
Adding a link to this page to the comment form.
how to make italics, bold, and blockquote in HTML
Submitted on March 10th, 2004 by Benjamin Melançon(Hi Al, I hadn't realized replies were already posted when I started this, so this comment isn't really necessary, but this is a different, more complicated way to write characters that HTML uses for the markup code: use special character references that begin with an ampersand and end in a semicolon, in this case < and > ['Less Than' and 'Greater Than'].)
As Dan Feder wrote above, we can skip HTML code entirely by using the simple autoformat syntax.
What about diacritics?
Submitted on March 22nd, 2004 by Trevor Top