Do you post in the most Efficient Manner i.e Am I using the SDMB controls right?

[Phlosphr]

I have a little spare time today to lol around the SDMB. And I am wondering if I am posting in the most efficent manner one can post. A few Q’s:

What is PHP code used for? Or monospace text?

Or what about images? The official rules say you can not post images yet there is a code for it? What gives?

Whats a TAG and why would I want to close one?

What about disabling smilies in a post? Am I getting wooshed or does this just mean no one can put a smiley in a particular post? Is there a hidden value in this?

What would running in vB Enhanced mode do for me? Anything?

I’ve been here almost three years and I’m wondering if I am missing out on something everyone else is enjoying? Thanks, Phlosphr.

[Munch]

When you disable smilies, I believe it means that the post you just entered will not allow codes for smilies to turn into smilies:

:wally
:jew

[rowrrbazzle]

You’d disable smilies if you didn’t like smilies. Another reason to disable smilies occurred here recently when someone tried to post a complicated Google cache URL that contained characters which vB interpreted as a smiley code, making the URL invalid. Disabling smilies for that post would have allowed the URL to remain valid.

A tag is just the a code for something other than vanilla text. The starting (or opening) bold tag in HTML is <b> and in vB is &#91b]. Closing it means just putting the ending tag that would end the bolding of your text, i.e., **. Not closing it obviously would bold text you didn’t want to bold.

Re images, they just haven’t updated the vB FAQ page.

A monospaced font is just a font where every character has the same width. On the SDMB the &#91code] tag is mostly used as a standard way to enable this, allowing columns of text to line up correctly. That tag also disables the elimination of multiple spaces on a line.

php info from http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/misc.php?s=&action=bbcode

A special case is for code written in the PHP language. If you are posting PHP code, you can enclose the source code in

 tags, and the script will automatically have syntax highlighting applied

It isn’t really useful on this board, but on boards devoted to PHP programming it would be.

vB enhanced mode from the FAQ http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/misc.php?action=faq&page=3#codebuttons

There are two modes available: normal and enhanced mode.

When using normal mode, pressing a button will pop-up a dialog for you to fill with text. It will then enter the text with the appropriate vB Code tags at the end of your message.

When using enhanced mode, pressing a button will insert the appropriate STARTING tag for the code, leaving you to enter text into the message area. When you have finished the text and want to close the tag, simply press the Close Current Tag button (alt+c). You may also nest tags in enhanced mode, and then use the Close All Tags button (alt+x) to close all open markup. Please note that the ‘close tag’ buttons only close tags that have been entered using the code buttons.

[rowrrbazzle]

I forgot to mention something. That “vB code” help link near the normal/enhanced radio button on the reply page doesn’t say anything about that, and that is a bit confusing.

[Munch]

Interesting. Let’s take a look-see…

http://www.:).com

www.:).com.com)

[Sublight]

Or what about images? The official rules say you can not post images yet there is a code for it? What gives?

With this software package, it’s possible to post images inside your posts, and so there’s a code for it. Since it tends to take up a good chunk of bandwidth, though, the admins here have disabled that feature. The vB code for it still exists, it just won’t do anything if you try to use it here (and getting rid of the code would probably involve making changes to the software that would void the warranty). I’ve seen other boards using the same software that do allow it.