This is just a small annoyance of mine and the Social Center.  When I send an e-mail through the social center, it is formatted pretty much the way I type it.  Much like my blogs show up the same way as I type them.  When I hit the enter key once, I get a line break.  When I put two line breaks together it is a new paragraph.  I know that this is a minor issue, but for those who write longer bulletins, it is kind of nice to have it user friendly, and readable.  As you can tell by reading my blog posts, I try to be user friendly, and break up my paragraphs well.  I don't have one long paragraph that runs together.  Of course, let's not talk about my sentences, as they can be run on for days.  lol

So, I decided to give a helping hand to those who would like to post a bulleting with a little formatting.  I have used this formatting, and it works quite well.  It is a very simple thing, and if you do it wrong, it will just look a little funny, but should not break anything on the page.  I just want to talk about 2 basic elements to use, the line break and creating a nice looking link.

The line break is the easiest.  I beg you to use it for those longer bulletins.  Even when you copy and paste another post, it would be nice if you took the time to put the line breaks in.  When you copy and paste, all that original formatting is lost, assuming that there was some original formatting.  Here is the super TOP SECRET line break code: <br />  That is it.  It is the most simple HTML tag used, and is quite good at doing what you need in this case.  Just put it in where you want the cursor to go down ONE line.  To get a paragraph, simply put 2 right next to each other, like this: <br /><br />

Now onto a something a little harder, a nice looking hyperlink.  Suppose you wanted to link to a page that had a super long URL, and it looked like shit.  You want to type in 'Click me' or something like that, and let the link do the work.  Or, if you have noticed, no URL works in a bulletin if all you do is type it in.  Say you wanted to create a link to 'www.officialwebman.com', you would type just that in, and it would not automatically be a link.

Here is the format for a link: <a href='URL Destination' target='_blank'>Text the user sees</a>

That looks a little cryptic, so let me explain each part of it.  This is called an 'a' tag, 'a' means address.  That is why we start inside the tag with 'a'.  The 'href=' section is the part where the link actually will go, and is not really seen in the text of the bulletin.  The "target='_blank'" is completely optional.  I personally use this because it opens a new browser window for the link, leaving the bulletin page open.  Then you have the 'Text the user sees', note that it is after the '>' and before the '</a>'.  It is between the start and end tags (HTML Speak).  Now that I have you completely confused, here is a couple of examples to show you:

I prefer to use the second structure, since it allows for others to copy and paste without formatting anything, and they still do not lose the link.  The first one, when copy and pasted, the text will show up, but the link is lost.

If you are still confused as to how to do the link stuff.  Just copy and paste the code into a bulletin, and see the difference.

I hope you are not completely confused, and you have at least learned a little bit about formatting a bulletin.  On a side note, HTML does not care how many spaces you put between words, it will always be displayed as one.  Try it out!  Put 20 or 30 spaces between some words, and see if you can tell. It can be annoying if you are accustomed to putting 2 spaces after each sentence in a paragraph.  But, no worries, most people don't even notice :).

Happy Bulletin Posting
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