Writer's Cafe Wizardry - Lesson 8

A Chapter by dw817

More space for comments, a slightly advanced course on inserting Youtube videos (including autoplay ability - please use sparingly !), and how to write posts in fonts not listed in Writer's Cafe.

Writer's Cafe Wizardry - Ch 08

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LESSON EIGHT - July 30th 2013 < >

Good afternoon, class ! Let's begin.

Now while Writer's Cafe does indeed let you enter comments for user posts, the space they've given to show it as you type is rather small. Fortunately, just like the very first lesson covered, you are permitted to not only change the size of your post area but your comment area as well.

What you want to do is GRAB with your mouse the little

and pull it down and to the right. Don't go too far to the right, but you should have lots of room going down.

And there you have it ! More space to see a bigger comment. As always before clicking Post Comment, press CTRL-A and CTRL-C to copy all of your comment to the clipboard. Then click to send. If WC messes up and loses your comment, and sometimes it does.

All you have to do is press the F5 key from your keyboard to reload the page, click in where you wanted to add your earlier comment, press CTRL-V and you're all set to try again.

* * *

The other item to cover are some advanced topics on inserting Youtube videos. I've had more than one person ask me how to add auto-play to a Youtube video. That is, the moment the page appears the Youtube video will start playing automatically.

You should also NEVER do this as a comment on a different user's profile as that's rather intrusive. Always let the user decide if they want to play your video or not in this case.

Now, I will tell you now, if it's on a post or private message and it's just pleasant music or something, that should be fine and not a problem.

But if someone starts speaking or yelling in the video, it may confuse or frighten the visitor into thinking this site has a virus or something and they may even stay away from your post or profile where it first appeared. Please use this option sparingly.

First, on the Youtube video, press ALT-D, CTRL-C, and then directly in the profile comment, private message, or your post, press CTRL-V and the URL address of the video should appear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABcDefgHiJK

Take out everything up to the = (equals)

ABcDefgHiJK

Now add on to the end of that a ? (question mark) followed by any of these commands you want to have):

autoplay=1	The video will start to play automatically, use sparingly !
loop=1	The video will start to play again from the beginning once it has finished
rel=0	Once the video finishes playing, it will NOT show a list of related videos
theme=light	The player controls will be LIGHT instead of dark, makes it stand out better

There are many other commands, but that should be enough to get you started. So, for instance, if you wanted the video to start playing automatically, to loop again when finished, and to have a LIGHT theme instead of a dark one, you would type all as on one line.

<iframe width="320" height="240" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ABcDefgHiJK?autoplay=1?loop=1?theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Where ABcDefgHiJK is what you retrieved from above video's URL.

If you want the video frame to be bigger, than you can change it to say 640x480. If the height is not 3/4 of the size across, however, your video may appear too wide or too tall. Suggested sizes are 160x120, 320x240, 480x360, and 640x480.

* * *

The next item is a bit more complex, and you should be aware that the font choices available in Writer's Cafe are definitely NOT the only fonts you have on your computer, or what you can post where others can read it.

In fact, aside from your basic Arial, all computers, including Macintosh support and can view Online for you, Comic, Courier, Georgia, Impact, Console, Palatino, Tahoma, Times, Trebuchet, and Verdana.

Here is a nice view of all of them, and no trickery, these are not images but actual text displayed in your browser to show you can use them entirely for yourself:

Arial	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw0123456789
Comic	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw0123456789
Courier	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Georgia	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Impact	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Console	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Palatino	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Tahoma	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Times	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Trebuchet	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789
Verdana	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw012345789

In order to add these, you have to type directly in Writer's Cafe editor the following:

<font face="{{name}}">
text you want to have appear in this special font you selected
</font>

The names for these fonts are exactly as follows, and you must type them exactly, complete with uppercase and lowercase letters: "Arial" "Comic Sans MS" "Courier New" "Georgia" "Impact" "Lucida Sans" "Trebuchet" "Verdana"

Some of these fonts may already be available in Writer Cafe's editor, but if they are not, now you have access to all of them ! Remember, in order to have these appear, you must SAVE your post, then re-edit it immediately. This is true with all HTML commands, including the adding of the Youtube video above.

That concludes today's lessons.

* * *

In the next lesson we'll learn more about HTML table creation, how to upload an image from the Internet directly without saving it to your hard-drive first (for areas on the Internet that open a file box instead of a URL address), and an introduction into ASCII codes and UNICODES.

As a bonus I'll list and have available for download a handy little timer you can use for Windows to remind you of real life events, like your cooking and laundry.

See you next week !