Formatting Hell

Started by Jester, February 11, 2010, 09:50:54 AM

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Jester

Hi there

I apologise if i am repeating old ground but has anyone got advice on formatting.

I am very tempted to leave any formatting alone. Here's why.

1. If i have a post that has lots of changes... e.g. Bold for each header.  Then sometimes when i press "preview" it changes and a whole chunk of "paragraph" text is now bold. I have often spent an extra ten minutes re-formatting something only to find it changing without any rhyme or reason. I presume the html close tags are not always being seen?

2. Sometimes when i press back and then forward i lose everything. Why do that ? Well when i have got frustrated with "Preview" changing the formatting of all my text after having spent 30 minutes making it look nice! I press back in the hope that I havent lost all that work and then realise I have lost all my content as well...

Is there any hope for me or should i just not bother with formatting?

Butterflykiss

Don't lose hope!  :-)  Code formatting can be a tricky thing, and it can take time and patience to discover mistakes.

1. You're right about this one, when you don't close just one tag, it can upset the format of your entire passage. If you see this is happening, like in your example, make sure that for each tag you've added a close for it. If necessary, you can use the "Remove Formatting" button, which will remove all tags, and start over.

2. Save often. One of the easiest ways is to highlight all the text, right click, and "copy." This way you'll have "stored" the entry, allowing you to paste it back into the dialogue box if it gets accidentally erased. You can also try practicing your post with formatting HERE, which works much like the "Preview" button here on Elliquiy does.


Jester

Thanks.

I dont personally use the tags myself. I mainly use the formatting icons above and in the past they have proved perfectly satisfactory but recently they have just been difficult.

Perhaps i should rely on BB code as you suggest.

Thanks!

Butterflykiss

The formatting icons are a good place to start, but if you're having problems with them formatting too much text, make sure that the closing tag is placed right after the piece of text you're trying to format.

You're welcome, and good luck!
Butterfly

Schrödinger

What I always find to help is, after the initial preview coming up wonky, looking for [/

Same symbols used for closing a formatting header, but if it doesn't show up in my searches on my badly formatted text, I know what line to blame.

    [li]
Schrödinger's O/O[/li]
[li]Plot ideas![/li][/list]