You'll learn about undocumented 'features' in the editor itself, how to get any color you want, vertically center images, upload non-blurry icons for your writing, and backup any page to your HD.
Writer's Cafe
Wizardry - Ch 02
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LESSON TWO - Jun 19th
2013<>
Okay, welcome back !
Now one thing you have noticed
in Writer's Cafe is they have a limited selection of
colors to choose from, especially if you want to
have bright pastel colors such as THESE: █ █
█ █ █
█ which, unfortunately,
is impossible to produce from their palette.
Now, what you CAN do is this. You can take your
mouse cursor and either highlight or triple-click
one of the colors I have shown above and press
CTRL-C. Then in your own writing press CTRL-V, then
hold down the SHIFT key, press the LEFT arrow key
once to highlight that colored block and then start
typing in that new color.
Remember, you cannot have any color changes, bold,
or images in post comments. Only your profile,
profile comments, your own posts, or private
messages.
A
more precise way so that you can have any color you
want at all is to type the following directly into
your post:
<font
color="#{hex-color}">This is colored
text !</font>
[
You can use this tool above to help you select
hexadecimal colors if you like ]
Where {hex-color} is a 6-digit hexadecimal number.
Briefly a hexadecimal number in this case is
2-digits from 00 to FF (fox-fox). Think of it as if
you had 16-fingers instead of 10 and you have the
right idea.
This is how computers today handle most coding. In
any case FF (fox-fox) is 255. So with the
understanding your digits are 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A
B C D E F , then you choose 3-sets of colors one
after the other.
The first is RED, the
2nd is GREEN, and the
3rd is BLUE, so if you
wanted ORANGE for instance, that would be:
<font
color="#FF8000">This
is colored text !</font>
And remember from the first lesson that your HTML
coding does not actually show up until you first
save, then re-edit it, and then can continue from
there.
Now, if this seems like too much work, then you are
certainly encouraged to download Firefox's own
webpage composer called Seamonkey, and you can find
that right HERE
and use their personal editor to not only have
greater message control but to select your own exact
colors.
OK, now let's say you decide you want to edit all of
your posts in Sea Monkey, and really you should as
it has greater flexibility and the ability to raw
edit your HTML, with a few exceptions. If you add
any FLASH or videos, you need to enter the raw HTML
in your post, not in HTML source.
While it won't appear in Seamonkey, it will most
certainly appear in Writer's Cafe once you re-edit
your post there.
* * *
OK, now you may not be aware of this but Writer's
Cafe gives you 688 pixels-across to work with in
your posts. So if you just go flat out into
Seamonkey and just start writing, the margins won't
match exactly what will appear in Writer's Cafe for
the final post.
So
how can you correct this ? You need a
template for Seamonkey. Stay with me, this
is a bit of work for some of you, copy the exact
following to clipboard. Do you remember how ? Either
triple-click it, or highlight it and press Ctrl-C:
Phew ! I know that's a lot. Now, bring up Seamonkey.
If this is your first time, Select File, New,
Composer Page.
Give it a moment, it should come up with a blank
page. Now, look just below your white input area and
you'll see a button that says, Source. Go ahead and
click on it. Ignore what you see there. Click
anywhere in that white area and then press Ctrl-A,
and the BACKSPACE key. This should erase everything.
Now press Ctrl-V to PASTE what you've just copied
from above. You are pasting directly to the raw
code, HTML here and the advantage is what appears
will be a perfect template to work with any Writer's
Cafe posts in the future.
Then click on PREVIEW. And notice how your page
margins are not only centered but exactly to
specifications as you want ! You can change those
3-text lines to anything you want at this point.
There is another added advantage of working with
your page Offline, should Writer's Cafe go down (and
I have heard it can on occasion), you won't lose
your work !
* * *
Now, to add images in Seamonkey is a bit trickier.
First off I must confess, I have absolutely no idea
how Writer's Cafe can store as whopping many images
as they do on their server.
I am thinking they need some reference to it so if
you want to have images on your page, you can press
CTRL-A and CTRL-C to copy everything in your
Seamonkey page and then in Writer's Cafe on a new
post, press CTRL-V to paste it.
Then add whatever pictures you need from Writer
Cafe's editor. Then Ctrl-A, CTRL-C to copy again and
this time in Seamonkey, press CTRL-A, Ctrl-V to
replace everything there with your new post
containing images.
* * *
Okay ! Let's move on. The next part of this lesson
will focus on how to vertically center images. The
advantage is you get THIS:
vertically centered line with image
compared
to THIS;
not vertically centered with
image
If you just add a default image with Writer's Cafe,
you'll get the latter where it is not vertically
centered.
What you CAN do is this. In Writer's Cafe add the
image, then click on it, then click the IMAGE button
and notice in the URL area that you have an exact
URL address for the image you just added.
Click up there, press CTRL-A and CTRL-C. Now that
it's copied, click Cancel and return back
to your message. From there type out:
<img
src="{Address}" align="absmiddle">
Where {Address} is where
you press CTRL-V to paste in the image address of
where your image is stored. To have it appear in
Writer's Cafe, remember you must save your post,
then re-edit it.
* * *
Right, moving on, you may have noticed after your
writing, you have a field entitled, "Image" with a
button for Browse. From here you can enter
an image icon for your writing, but you should know
a few things first !
While you can upload any old image and it will
rescale, there is an excellent chance it will blur
your image. So what is the optimal upload for a
writing icon ? 100x75 pixels exactly, saved not as a
.JPG but as a 24-bit .PNG file.
Now I've learned a bit more about some of the image
limitations in Writer's Cafe and while you can
upload in your own writing any included image of any
size, it will resize it down to less than or equal
500 pixels across and less than or equal to 500
pixels down, maintaining proportions - but you
really don't want it to cause your picture can get
blurry and introduce new JPG artefacts.
Your best bet is to use a nice program like
Paintshop Pro and save off the images yourself,
keeping them less than 500 either across or down.
* * *
The other thing I wanted to touch on was the ability
to save your posts including comments. The easiest
and best way to do this is to use the Firefox
browser. Go ahead and view (not edit) one of your
writings.
Then in Firefox select File, Save Page As. Ensure
the "Save as type" listed there says, "Web Page,
complete."
Select a directory where you want to save your page.
Now one file and one directory will be made. The
file is the raw HTML of your post and the directory
is all the images and links to it. The advantage
here is even if Writer's Cafe cannot be reached or
(hopefully this will never happen) vanishes
completely - you still have a perfect backup of your
work, complete with comments.
To test it, disconnect the Internet. Then in Firefox
or your choice of browsers. Then in Firefox's menu,
select File, Open File, and select the HTML
you just saved. Give it a moment to load. And BAM !
There you have it, an exact copy of your page with
comments !
* * *
In
the next lesson we'll learn about how to create
real HTML tables where you can have boxes and
lines in your text with your choice of colors, how
to post your first video, how to create an account
with Google Sites (for hosting images larger than
500-pixels across), and a few basics you need to
know about adding raw HTML into your
profile editor.
Well I hope you're learning some of it cause it takes me a few hours to get these all together. :pread moreWell I hope you're learning some of it cause it takes me a few hours to get these all together. :p
button
and notice in the URL area that you have an exact
URL address for the image you just added.
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