I’ve been hobbling along the internet for about a year now, and I think it’s high time I learned how to do this.
I’ve known for awhile that if I just cut the address of a web page and paste it on a vBulletin or UBB message board post, it will (usually) make a link… like… say, this one… that shows Kimmi from ‘Survivor 2’ flashing her suspiciously underdeveloped boobies:
http://www.survivornews.net/images/s2/kimmiflashes.jpg
Okay. But I increasingly see, here and on other message boards, how some people will type a sentence like, “You can see Kimmi’s breasts here…” and the words ‘Kimmi’s breasts’ will be highlighted and underlined in blue as a link that you can click on.
That’s sooooo cool. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it, too, but I’ve been failing miserably. I’ve tried right-clicking my mouse to study the source code, but, try as I might, I haven’t quite gotten it yet. Maybe it’s because I don’t really understand HTML and don’t know what some of the symbols, like < and > are for. So will somebody PUH-leeze help me out, show me step-by-step how it’s done? Assume I’m too much of a dummy to buy a “Dummies” book on the topic. Assume I barely mastered UBB code and making smilies.
And while we’re on the subject, how do you type the letter ‘e’ so that it has an accent mark over it, like in the word cafe’? Some word processing programs I use do it automatically, but I notice some people here on the boards do it in their posts, too, when referring to irregular words.
Just replace the { with [ and the } with ] and you’re all set.
And about the strange characters: Well, assuming you’re on a Windows machine (what I’m experienced in), you can open the Start menu, open the ‘Find’ section, open ‘Find a File or Folder’, and find a program called charmap (also called Character Map). Open it and set the typeface to Times New Roman (the default). You’ll be able to select, cut, and paste all sorts of odd characters with that program. If you use a Mac or a Linux the above advice might not be helpful in the least.
Note that the excellent instructions given by Derleth represent the code used on Message Boards using vB software (such as the SDMB). For Message Boards using UBB software, the rules are the same, except that you omit the double-quotes around the actual URL.
In other places, you would use HTML that uses the “angle braces” (less-than or greater than signs: < > ).
