Learning the Boneyard, Lesson #4: Using the Toolbar

[HuskyNan]

Previous lessons
Learning the Boneyard, Lesson #1: Private messaging
Learning the Boneyard, Lesson #2: Report, Ignore, and Polls
Learning the Boneyard, Lesson #3: Posting links

People are probably asking, What is a Toolbar? It is the line of strange looking symbols above the box where you type a post. If you hover your mouse over one of the icons, the type of function will appear, but here's a quick recap:

 

[UConn82]

This thread is excellent. Thank you so much Nan.

 

[HuskyNan]

Some of the functions are pretty self explanatory. To create the desired effect, highlight the text and then click on:

Bold = Boldface text
Italics = Italicize words for emphasis (I like this rather than ALL CAPS, which is considered shouting on the Internet)
Underline = Well, underline. Ditto.
Font color = This allows you to change the text color from the default black to some other color. Again, just highlight the text you want to change, click on the button and choose your color(s).
Font size = Again, rather self-explanatory. The default text size is 4.
Font family = This allows you to change the type of text from the default Georgia to Arial or Courier New or whatever you like
Links = Were explained in lesson 3
Unlink = Sometimes in copying and pasting something here, you unwittingly copy a link you didn't mean to include. Using the Unlink allows you to highlight the link, click, then turn the link into just plain text
Alignment = You can have your text
Left justify (default)

Right justify​

or Center​

Bullet list & Ordered lists = Start typing a list, highlight it and click on either option.

• Bread
• Milk
• Cheese
• Chicken

1. Santa
2. Easter Bunny
3. Tooth Fairy

Indent and Outdent = These are alignment tools that can make spaces before text, kind of like a Tab. I chose Dickens for my example because the man could cover three pages with one paragraph; sometimes one sentence! If anyone ever needed to learn to indent, it was Dickens.

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
First Paragraph

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.​

 

[HuskyNan]

Smilies = I think most people have found the smilies/emojis/emoticons. Click on the happy face then choose one of the available options (hint: if you want a smily that's not listed, search the Internet [try Google Images] and copy/paste one as a picture. If you don't know how to do that, Pictures is tomorrow's lesson)
Posting Pictures = The postcard looking icon is for posting pictures. If you've posted a link, you may have figured this one out already because it's very similar
Posting Videos = The filmstrip is to post links to videos. Again, the process is very similar to posting a link or picture
Insert = This actually has a bunch of functions. If you click on it, you'll see your options are:

Clicking on Quote brings up this text (I added spaces between the U and the O so you could see it) [QU OTE][/QU OTE] By typing or copying/pasting whatever I'm quoting, I can do this:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

All I did was copy/paste the text, highlight it, then click on the icon, then on Quote.

 

[HuskyNan]

I'm sorry to do this to you, but I'm going to have to continue this lesson later. If JS or Biff or any other tech savvy person wants to pick up where I left off, that's fine with me.

My adult sons are home for Christmas and I have today off so my husband and I are spending the day with the boys. Have a great day!