HTML Help

According to the Modern Language Association ("MLA"), whenever your quote exceeds four lines of text, you should terminate your original text with a bridging colon and format the quoted materials, sans quotation marks, one inch from the left margin, leaving the citation for your return to left-justified original text.

Thankfully, things are a little easier here at BlueNC! Here's an example of how the block quote tag works. If you type the following:

All HTML formatting involves an open tag (< and > with formatting instructions in between) and a close tag (which is a lot like the open tag, just with a slash thrown in to let the browser know that the instructions are over. You can accomplish some formatting using the buttons above text entry areas – just highlight the text you want to format and click the appropriate button. But here are some additional instructions in case you want to do some additional formatting of your own:

• Type this:
       Here's how you make stuff <strong>bold</strong>
  

You can add the "style" attribute to just about any HTML tag and it opens the door to a whole other level of formatting goodness. To use the style selector to wrap text, first begin with your image tag:

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/151/410845763_72859fedb0_m.jpg" />

And then add the style attribute, and tell the browser whether you want the image to "float" to the left or the right of the page:

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/151/410845763_72859fedb0_m.jpg" style="float: left;" />

Followed by some text, that yields:

BlueNC does not, generally speaking, host images. That means that, before you can post a picture here, you'll need to find a home for it on the web. Popular free solutions include ImageShack, photobucket and (my favorite) flickr.

Once you have uploaded a picture to the internet and you know the picture's URL (image hosting companies like those above will help you get the URL for your image), all you need is a little HTML. For example, typing this:

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/438153255_9530f01350_m.jpg" />

produces this:

First, you need to know the web address, or URL, of the page that you want to link to. The easiest way to get this is to visit the page, select the URL from your browser's location bar, and copy (Ctrl-C, or "Copy" under the "Edit" menu) the URL.

Second, you need the HTML syntax for creating a hyperlink. It's a lot easier than it sounds. Here's an example. Suppose you want to write the sentence "here's a web site with some interesting information", and you want the words "web site" to link to the Center for American Progress's site. You would type the following: