A Disabled Fisherman - Bulletin Board

Hello. I hope these instructions will help you out. I made this page for those on The Neuropathy Association's bulletin board, but they will work at any BB that lets you use HTML. You must type using the same spacing and punctuation as you see on this page. According to how your browser is set up, some of the examples here may not show, but will give you the general idea of what to do. Any more questions, let me know. Email me.

1. Getting words to look different

To make a word bold:

Type Whatever. This gets you Whatever. Just insert your text in place of Whatever. Simple, huh?

To make a word in italics:

Type Whatever This gets you Whatever.

To underline a word:

Type Whatever This gets you Whatever.

To change color:

Type in This will change your color to a medium blue. Some colors you can use are navy, orange, red, yellow, purple, pink, and brown. There are many others. As you can see, real light colors are very hard to read.

You can also use what are called hexadecimal codes instead of color names. A hexadecimal code consists of numbers, letters, or a combination of both. An example of using a hexadecimal code is this:

Type in This happens to be the code for black. You must put the # sign in front even if the code is all letters, such as "#FFFAFA"

Color names and their Hexadecimal Codes

Please notice there are no spaces between words if colors are more than one word.

Chart showing colors and their codes

To change the look of your font:

Type in This is what I use for the body of my posts. It looks like this. You can find other font names in your regular word processing program. Not all will work, but a great many will. Remember that really fancy fonts are difficult for those with poor eyesight to read. Use them only for your signature.

To change the size of your font:

Type in This is the size I use. It is larger than the normal size used on the board. The numbers go from 1-7, with 7 being huge. Try not to get carried away here. This is a 1. This is a 7. Also, be aware that even if you type in a 3 every time, some fonts are larger than others. I am typing in "Tahoma" at 3. If I type in "Gill Sans" at 3, it is slightly smaller.

You may combine the above like this:

This will give you what I have on my posts.

Very Important:

When you are done typing your post or wish to change fonts, you must type in This ends the previous font's attributes and you can then change to a different face, color, or size. You also want to make sure that you type at the end of your post. I have my signature set up to do this like this:

When I click to post, this comes up and all I have to do is type in the space between lines as I've saved it as part of my signature. If I want to change something, I just change it here or I go to my signature and change it permanently.

(For those of you reading this who know about HTML, you will see that I am taking the long way on combining these attributes. It may be only slightly longer, but I've found it's easier for newbies to learn it this way. If they continue their HTML education, they will learn the shorter ways. I'm just trying to get them posting in colorful and movable type. Yes, the shorter ways do work on boards. If you read the HTML of this page, you will see the shortcuts being used.)

2. Now for moving words

For continually moving words:

For words that continually move across the screen, you type:

<marquee>The words you wish to move.</marquee> You will get the below. You must remember to put </marquee> at the end of the words you want moving.

The words you wish to move.

Now, it can get quite annoying trying to read type that is continually moving, so we modify it a bit to get it like this:

<marquee loop=2>It will cross the screen twice, so it has probably stopped moving by the time you read this.</marquee> Since I typed in 2, it will cross the screen twice. You may use any number here. Problem here is that the text will disappear after crossing twice, so we move ahead.

It will cross the screen twice, so it has probably stopped moving by the time you read this.

It's boring to have everything moving in the same direction, so let's change it.

<marquee direction="right">Will move toward the right side.</marquee> You will never type in "left" because it does that direction automatically.

Now there are some other things you can do, but the board does not like them very well, so I won't bother with them.

<marquee direction="right" behavior="alternate" loop=2>Insert text here.</marquee> The text will move first toward the right, then alternate and stop after crossing the screen twice.

<marquee direction="right" behavior="alternate" loop=2>Insert text here.</marquee> Hit reload or refresh and scroll quickly to bottom of page to see the final outcome.

A clickable link is one in which your text is linked to a URL. They come in very handy for signatures on BB's. They use the <A HREF> tag, such as <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/scosmo451">A Disabled Fisherman</A>, which results in A Disabled Fisherman. Note that the URL is placed within parentheses and within the <> and A Disabled Fisherman is not. In order to get your results, place your URL in exchange for http://www.geocities.com/scosmo451, then your text in place of A Disabled Fisherman. You can also use the techniques above and change color, size, font, and add movement. Here's an example: <marquee direction="right" behavior="alternate" loop=5>A Disabled Fisherman</A></marquee>, which gives you: