HTML in Posts January 12, 2001 4:37 PM   Subscribe

This isn't a feature request per se, but I'm wondering if there are any guidelines about what HTML is OK in posts. I was experimenting tonight, trying to get a quote to format correctly as a block, and nothing worked. It seemed like using any block tag (yes, closed correctly) just totally trashed the formatting of the rest of the comment. No biggie, and I didn't want to mess things up for following posters, so I refrained. But. . . are there any general rules? (besides "just say no"?) And are entities OK or do they get munged somehow? (using IE5/Mac, btw)
posted by rodii to Feature Requests at 4:37 PM (11 comments total)

Actually, there's some CSS munging going on.

if you write <blockquote>stuff</blockquote> it will work when submitted, regardless of what you see in the preview.

I have some nested divs I need to clean up (did you know that metafilter only uses a couple tables at the top of the page, and the rest is purely CSS formating? it's not easy to do correctly all the time).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:06 PM on January 12, 2001


That's great. I didn't realize you were doing all that with CSS but I guess that with the one-column format you don't need to deal with positioning. That's always been the sticking point that's forced me back to tables.

I floated a table to the right in a comment once as a "sidebar" experiment but I felt like I was crossing a line somehow. Didn't want to offend the gods by breaking the page. It would be fun to use some of the more expressive possibilities of HTML sometimes, though.
posted by rodii at 7:00 PM on January 12, 2001


It seems to me that you could use a Metatalk post to experiment with formatting, and once you got it down, then use it in MeFi. I suspect people wouldn't crucify you for that. For instance, I'm curious to know if strikethroughs work.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:14 PM on January 12, 2001


Blink checks out

Fontsize does not

What is the policy on placing pictures in a thread? It almost always screws up my page.
posted by thirteen at 11:19 PM on January 12, 2001


I've read about problems in Netscape with pictures posted in comments. Don't use it myself though. :)
posted by pnevares at 12:02 AM on January 13, 2001


placing pictures in a thread irritates me. not because of any formatting problems, but because I don't want to download them here. I want my text pure and clean, goshdarnit!

I've never had any problems with adding html to a thread, but I've stuck, for the most part, to things like bold, italicize, blockquotes and small, all things that Matt's taken into consideration.


teletype?

posted by cCranium at 6:33 AM on January 13, 2001


How do you add a link to a comment? How do you post multiple links? Bold? Italic? Could this information be posted in a FAQ? I'm really enjoying Metafilter, but I'd like to improve the technical quality of my posts. Little help for the html-illiterate?
posted by JDC8 at 10:27 AM on January 13, 2001


JDC8: The way to learn those things is to use your browser. All browsers have an option to let you look at the raw source for a page. On IE, it's VIEW->SOURCE. On Navigator it's VIEW->PAGE SOURCE.

Then go look at something someone else has done and see what tags they used.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:49 AM on January 13, 2001


JDC8, if you're using IE on a PC, you might also want to try the keystrokes provided.

highlight the word you want to link with your mouse, hit the proper keystroke, and it will build the HTML for you.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:52 PM on January 13, 2001


Steven and mathowie,

Thanks for the assistance. I now see the Matrix for what it really is...
posted by JDC8 at 2:05 PM on January 13, 2001


posted by palegirl at 5:58 PM on January 13, 2001


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