This is just a little primer to show you how to use html (hypertext markup language) in your posts on the Odd Couple message board. All html commands are contained within brackets such as this:
<command>
(The brackets will not show up in your message - I used a special command to make the brackets show up here.) Some brackets are only used once, and some require opening and closing brackets. For example, to put a separater (horizontal rule) after your text, type <hr> and you will see this:
That command only needs to be typed once.
Most html commands need to be opened and closed. For example, type <i> to make your text appear in italics. However, you have to close the italics command, or else the entire rest of your message will be in italics (like this), when you only meant to italicize a word or sentence. You close the italics command by typing </i>. For example, to type this sentence:
The Odd Couple is my favorite show.
I typed:
The Odd Couple is my <i>favorite</i> show.
To make text bold, surround it with <b> and </b> tags. To underline text, surround it with <u> and </u> tags.
To change the color of text, you have two options. One is to use the <font color> tags. (If you are already familiar with html, you probably know that font tags are considered deprecated and that we are now supposed to use style sheets to determine font color. I don't use font tags on this website anymore for that reason. However, since this is just a message board, I'm not going to worry whether or not all the posters are using the latest code.) However, if you would like to use style sheets, you can use the <span style> tags.
For example, suppose I want to make some text red:
The Odd Couple is my favorite show.
To do this, I would type:
The Odd Couple is my <font color="red">favorite</font> show.
Or, I could type:
The Odd Couple is my <span style="color:red;">favorite</span> show.
You can also give your text a background color. Suppose I want a yellow background:
What a bright background!
I would type this:
<span style="background-color:yellow;">What a bright background!</span>
Background and text colors can be combined. To get a result like this:
Colored text and background
I would type:
<span style="color:white; background-color:blue;">Colored text and background</span>
To display an image, use the <img src> tag. The full address of the image must follow in quotes, resulting in this format:
<img src="http://www.oddcouple.info/oc5.jpg">
To create a link, use the <a href> tag, in this format: <a href="http://www.address-to-be-linked.com">the text of the link</a>. For example, to get the following link:
I would type:
<a href="http://www.oddcouple.info">The Odd Couple</a>
For even more info on using html, see the primers at HTMLGoodies.
This page was last updated on March 13, 2005.