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Advanced Tools & Special Effects

Quotations

The QUOTE code displays whatever text is between its opening and closing tags as the content of a pre-formatted inset box in your post.  The basic syntax for the QUOTE code is illustrated by this sample post:

That post would display like this:

The opportunity to use the QUOTE command also arises when you want to add a post to an existing thread in response to something stated in one of the earlier posts.  To begin your post with a quotation from the prior post, click the button in the upper-right of the earlier post.  That launches you into the post drafting interface, with a special field containing the text of the earlier post.  You can leave that text as is (in which case that whole post will appear as a quotation at the start of your reply), or you can edit it (which you will frequently do by deleting whatever text you don't need to quote).

Whenever you make use of the button to begin a post of your own, the quote box will appear directly beneath a note showing the author and date/time of the post you are quoting.

Adding Links

Among the ib codes, one of the most powerful is the URL code.  It lets you insert a link to any page on the internet.

The syntax for the URL command is:

where the value is the url address for the page you want to link to.  As with all the ib codes, you can insert the URL tags manually.  If instead you click on the URL button above the Post Window, an input box appears for you to provide the URL address of the destination page and the text you want displayed as the link.  When you complete those input boxes the server inserts the entire URL command into your post.

Whether you complete the URL tags with the help of the input boxes or entirely by manual insertion, the easiest way to insert the value of the opening tag (the URL address for the link you are making) is to open your browser in a separate window, navigate to the destination page, highlight its address in the address window of your browser, copy it (Ctrl-C), toggle back to your post drafting interface window (Alt-Tab), and paste the URL into the opening tag (Ctrl-V).  As you first learn to use the URL code, be sure to click the Post Preview button and test the link there.  If it doesn't work, you need to edit the URL tags in your post.

Although the URL code is often used to create a link to a forum thread, you need to take several precautions in the process of defining the destination URL.  First and most important, go to your Board Setting controls (My Controls/Board Settings) and look at the setting adjacent to the question, "Do you wish to hide your session id in the links?" If it is not already set to "Yes," change the setting to "Yes" and click the "Change my Account Options" button.  Then go back to the same page and verify that the setting registered, and that your control is now set to "Yes."

Second, take a few minutes to learn the basic components of URL addresses for the Basin forums.  You can read about them here:

How Forum URLs Work

Third, when you paste a forum URL into the URL tag, check to see that the session id number does not appear.  If it does appear, then your control settings are not properly suppressing it.  You should then manually delete the session id number from the URL.  The entire string of characters between the "s=" symbols and the first "&" symbol to the right of them must be deleted before you can use the URL as a link.

What all of these steps are designed to prevent is having a session id show up in a URL link.  Although it won't interfere with how the link works for you, it will cause the link to fail for some of the other folks who click on it.

Icons

The most noticeable feature of the post drafting interface is the assembly of little icons on two sides of the Post Window.  The icons to the left are "smilies," for insertion in-line into the body of your post.  The icons below the Post Window are "post icons" that display in the forum index page, adjacent to the Topic Title and Topic Description for your post.

You can insert into a post as many of the icons to the left -- the Clickable Smilies -- as you please.  You can insert them either by clicking on them (which inserts their text-code equivalents into your post at the point of your cursor), or you can type their text-codes in manually.  The text code for the traditional smiley face is, for example, :)    When your post is displayed, the server converts those codes back into icon images.

You can pick just one of the icons below the Post Window at any one time.  Select the radio button adjacent to the icon you want.

Importing Graphics

When you want to create a post for others to see an image file, you have a choice.  You can embed a link to that file, or you can display the image right in your post.  The first option uses the URL code.  The technique for doing that is here.  The second option uses the IMG code.  Its syntax is simple:  The opening tag is [IMG] and the closing tag is [/IMG].  Between those tags you insert the URL address for the image file you want to import.  You can let the forum software create the IMG tags for you by putting your cursor where you want the image to display, clicking the IMG button above the Post Window, pasting the image's URL in the input window, and clicking "OK".

Because image files tend to be huge, the Basin has a forum for posts importing them: The Pictures Pages forum.  Importing a large image into a thread on one of the other forums creates a headache for others who want to read that thread, as their computers lug through the process of trying to load it.  Draft your full post with your image in the Pictures Pages forum, and link to it with a short post in the thread you want to participate in.  As an alternative, use an image software program to reduce the size of the image file to a manageable level.

When you import a game screenie, always check to see that it doesn't include a basin game name or pass.  If it does, be sure to crop it out or edit over it.  Even if your screenie is from a non-Basin game you may want to delete the game/pass display for your own security.

Creating Tables

It is entirely possible to put tables into forum posts, but until recently it has not been as easy as you might hope.  (Skip to the end of this section for Jer's magical tool to make tables quickly and easily.)

Several methods that would make the process simple unfortunately do not work:  Tables and cells from a spreadsheet program like Excel or Lotus do not preserve their structure when copy/pasted into a post; and html tags for creating tables display as text rather than operating as codes.  So neither <table><tr><td> nor [table][tr][td] will do anything except display as plain text.

If you want the robust control of an html table then your only real option is to create one as a separate html page, upload it to a server, and include a link to it in your post.  The procedure for inserting url links in a post is here.

But to create a post displaying in tabular fashion a manageable amount of information, you have two techniques available that will get the job done.  Each of them requires you to set the font of the table (or of your entire post, though that isn't required) to a monospace font like Courier.  One of the characteristics of monospace fonts is that every character occupies the same width.  In effect, each character position on the screen is a "column." You can therefore vertically align cells of words or numbers by making sure the first letter of each "cell" occupies the same position from the start of its line as the first character of the "cells" above and below it.

With that in mind, the only constraint is that spacing cannot be created with consecutive space characters.  Although consecutive spaces will appear as white space in the Post Window, the server will display just a single space no matter how many space characters you place next to one another.  Now, let's look at the two techniques available to you, using as an example a post you want to create showing Faster Hit Recovery rates that will end up looking like this:

The first technique overcomes the no-adjacent-spaces constraint by using the same "invisible characters" technique that creates an indented paragraph.  Although you can use any character(s) for your "invisible characters," as a practical matter you want to pick one that is unobtrusive in the Post Window where you're going to line up the figures in your table.  Either the underline character or the period work best.

Using that character exclusively between the text/numbers you want to display as a table, lay out your table in the Post Window so that everything lines up the way you want.  Here's how it would look with our FHR table, using the underline character to create the desired spacing and alignment:

Now, enclose each stretch of consecutive underline characters inside opening and closing black color tags.  If you use the copy/paste shortcut keys (Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V), this goes much more quickly than typing them all out.  Your Post Window now looks like this:

Then enclose the whole thing between an opening and closing "font=courier" tag to make it all monospaced.  Finally, do any extra formatting you want and add any more text to your post, and preview it all in the preview window.

This technique renders the black characters entirely invisible to viewers using the normal D2 forum skin.  But forum users can (and some do) set their controls to the ib skin, which has a very light gray background.  For those viewers, the "black" characters will in fact display as black, and therefore be quite visible.  The results will still display as an orderly table if you have uniformly used the underline or period character for all "invisible" characters, but they won't actually be invisible to those viewers.

The other technique to create a table overcomes the "no-consecutive-spaces" constraint a different way.  It renders a display that isn't quite as clean as the "invisible characters" table, but it's easier and quicker to create.  It has the added benefit of displaying substantially the same way regardless of whether viewers use the standard forum skin or the ib skin.  Using this technique, instead of consecutive spaces, you alternate a single space with a period.  Both the text in the Post Window and the final display look the same (so long as you use a monospace font).  For our table, you would type it out like this:

If you want to try it for yourself, just highlight the contents of that window with your cursor (be sure to get the "font=courier" tags), copy it (Ctrl-C), open up your own thread in the Testing Grounds forum, paste what you highlighted, and hit the "Submit Post" or "Preview Post" button.  Voila!

Multi-talented Jer has taken most of the manual labor out of creating tables. His table-creating utility makes it almost easy!

Uncovering More Posting Secrets

Whenever you spot a post with a special effect that you don't know how to duplicate, simply click the "Quote" button in the upper-right corner of that post.  It takes you to the post drafting interface, with a window containing the original text including all special codes for that post.  By studying this peek behind the curtain of a post's display you can diagnose how the effect was accomplished.  You can even copy the source input from the quote window, start your own post (such as in the Testing Grounds forum), paste the contents into the Post Window, and edit that text to suit your needs.