So you've mastered the simple HTML we've included in the "Getting Started" and now you're ready to add pictures and embedded video into your comments and diaries. Here's a crash course on how to do just that.
To embed a hyperlink in your diary, enclose both the URL, and the text you want to display as a link, in square brackets, and separate them with at least one space.
The following two examples will display only the text Progressive Blue as a blue colored hyperlink in your diary.
{http://progressiveblue.com Progressive Blue} Please use square brackets and not the curly brackets used to demonstrate
Other sites may require the full HTML code to display a hyperlink. If you want to post a link to Progressive Blue in a comment on another blog, you can copy and paste the following (which will also work here):
To italicize, surround the text you want to italicize with <i> on the left and </i> on the right.
To bold, surround the text you want in bold with <b> on the left and </b> on the right.
To underline, surround the text you want underlined with <u> on the left and </u> on the right.
To blockquote, surround the text you want to blockquote with <blockquote> on the left and </blockquote> on the right.
To strike out text with a line through it, surround the text you want to strike out with <strike> on the left and </strike> on the right.
To center text on a page, surround the text you want to center with <p align="center"> on the left and </p> on the right.
To create a gray divider line in your diary, like the gray lines between the sections of this Diary Formatting Tips page, place an <hr> tag where you want the gray line to appear. The <hr> tag can be used by itself and is one of the few HTML tags that does not require a closing </hr> tag.
To create a line feed use a <br> tag. You can use two <br> tags in succession (<br><br>) to create a blank line, or multiple <br> tags in succession to create multiple blank lines. Like <hr> tags, <br> tags do not require closing </br> tags.
--- POSTING PICTURES ---
To post a picture in your diary, you'll need the URL (web address) of a picture. You can obtain the URL for any picture you find on any web page by right clicking the picture and choosing "properties". For example, you can obtain the URL for the following picture by right clicking on it and choosing properties.
HINT: You can copy the code from any of the boxes below and paste it into your diary, then replace the URL in quotes with the URL of any image you want to display, and adjust the width (max width 500) to suit your preference.
The following line of code will display a picture in your diary. Replace the URL in this example with the URL of the picture you want to display, and adjust the width (max width 500) to your preference (use "preview" to make adjustments). The height will be auto-calculated proportionally - you do not need to specify it.
You can set the "align" parameter to "left" or "right", to display your picture on either side of the diary page.
TO MAKE YOUR DIARY TEXT "WRAP", (display BESIDE and BELOW your picture), begin typing the text of your diary immediately following the image code:
<img src="http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o17/Predictor_CA/Flora%20mora/orange1.jpg” width="191" align="left">START TYPING YOUR DIARY TEXT HERE.....
To begin your diary BELOW your picture you'll need to define your picture as being in a "paragraph" of it's own. This is done with "paragraph" tags.
TO CENTER YOUR PICTURE and display your diary text BELOW it, REMOVE the "align" parameter from the image code line, and enclose the entire image code line in centering paragraph tags:
YouTube videos are the easiest and quickest video format you can post in your diary.
When you see a YouTube video on a web page, the picture you are looking at is in effect just a more complex form of hyperlink that, when you click the arrow in the center, streams the video from YouTubes servers and plays it for you.
If you see a YouTube video that you'd like to post, to obtain the "embed" code for that video simply click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right corner of the video and it will take you to the YouTube page for that video.
To the right of the video on the YouTube page you'll see a box with the title "embed" beside it. Copy the code from that box and paste it into your diary where you want the video to appear.
Here is John Edwards speaking at the DNC Winter Meeting in February 2007.
The "embed" code for that video (available by clicking the YouTube logo) looks like this, and if pasted into your diary will display the video aligned against the left margin, as above:
To post a video in your diary centered on the page, simply enclose the "embed" code in centering paragraph tags (the same as centering pictures, as described above):
