Useful Hints For Using This Forum

Hey everybody,

since this is a very modern forum software which most of us are not used to, I thought it might be a good idea to collect some useful hints :slight_smile:

First one I’d like to add is this:

You can directly paste screenshots from your clipboard into the text box, like I’m doing here

At least this works on a Mac using OS X.

(For screenshots on OS X: cmd+3 is whole screen and saves a file on the desktop, additionally pressing ctrl sends it to your clipboard; cmd 4 is for objects (like windows or menus), pressing space after that gives you a crosshair for selecting an area, and again, additionally pressing ctrl while you select the area (or the object) sends it to the clipboard instead of saving a file.

This is very practical since I don’t have to save any files on my disk and search for them when I want to post … I can simply go anywhere, take a screenshot directly to the clipboard and paste it here:

Since “print screen” does something similar on Windows (send a full screen screenshot to the clipboard), you could try the same.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_screen#Modern_use


Could this be useful for you?

Cordially, Tom

16 Likes

Second one is about watching/tracking threads resp. turning it off.


Beneath the thread & comments there’s this button with a popup menu that may automatically change its status (depending on your forum preferences)

For you it might look like this (again, depending on your settings), here without the popup menu:


And you can also set your prefs globally, as mentioned, on your forum preferences page:


Please add your own hints if you think they could be unknown but useful for others :slight_smile:

Greetings, Tom

11 Likes
2 Likes

Finally, a list of emoticons

turns to: :godmode: :triumph: :sparkles: :boom:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/where-can-i-see-a-list-of-all-available-smilies-emoji-or-emoticons-and-their-codes/2912

See also http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/ for the codes

:sparkles: Fun, fun, fun :smiley:

8 Likes

:dizzy_face: That’s alot of emoji! Now here’s to hoping they switch back the icons in a future patch, these new smilies are creepy =/

3 Likes

yes, but at least we have some

BTW I really, really really love these icons: STRATO - Domain not available — ten pages of lovely smilies created by a nice young German lady. It is possible to integrate them in forums but one has to contact her. Quite certain she wouldn’t want any money.

<edit>
Sadly, that site doesn’t exist anymore :cry:
</edit>

Greetings, Tom

1 Like

Thanks, BTW, for pinning this … < honoured >

1 Like

Well … forum features are far from fathomed, at least for me.

Right now I tried to strike out a few words used tags for, you’ve guessed it: striking out some words.

<strike>how to strike out text</strike> —> how to strike out text ;-))

Cool.


<edit>

Just found out it also works with shortcuts <s>text</s> —> text

Now if only I knew how to add colour and define sizes without having to use the relatively restricted H1/H2 stuff …

</edit>

5 Likes

BTW, have you noticed this?



Quite helpful, IMO. You can also view the keyboard shortcuts by typing “?” when not in a text field.

6 Likes

Any Other Information Junkies here?

Since it is not only possible to track/watch/mute threads, but also for whole categories (which in classical forums are “subforums“ or ”boards”) I just went through the forum, setting the tracking options to my taste, which was:

Watching: 2
Tracking: all others except for one muted category.

At the top of every category you find this button which expands to the following flyout (popup? dropdown?):

Easy-peasy, right? Just be warned that apparently the option applied to a category is not propagated down to its subcategories, so you’ll have to dig down and set them individually.


Useful? Or is all this obvious to everybody?

5 Likes

@smurph:

Here’s how to do it:

<details> <summary>Summary Text</summary>
hidden text
</details>

results in:

Summary Text hidden text
6 Likes

Thanks @trohde. I’ve seen this feature sometimes but didn’t know how to reproduce it.

Are there... many other tag that we can use in forum posts?
2 Likes

@lysnew, I don’t know other tags except the only other tag I know is the strike tag <s> text </s>

The details tag I found on the discourse forum:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/we-now-support-hidden-and-expanding-text-in-posts/25712

1 Like

Code tags, if you want to share something with tags that you don’t want to be parsed by the forum software:

<everything in in angled brackets is treated as a tag>, thus the angled brackets and the content disappear EXCEPT if you put backticks ( ` ) around it.

Cmd+Shift+C on the Mac, on Windows probably Ctrl+Shift+C.

Note: Apparently a comma, semi-colon, and exclamation or question mark break the angled brackets:
<lalala, ladeeda>


A line is created by typing three dashes aka hyphens (---) or underscores (___) in an empty line.


BUT if you put a dash directly under a text line, the text is turned into a headline.

(but you can get that also by beginning a line with the hash sign #), and there are seven levels of headers:

lala

lala

lala

lala

lala

lala
lala
# lala
## lala
### lala
### lala
#### lala
##### lala
###### lala

If you write two dashes (--) or three dashes (---) in a text line they are turned into an “En Dash” – or “Em Dash” —.

Likewise, if you type three periods (...) they are turned into the Ellipsis sign (…)


Bold and Italics / Italics are known, I assume.
**Bold** and *Italics* / _Italics_

Keyboard shortcuts: Cmd/Ctrl+B, Cmd/Ctrl+I


Numbered Lists?

  1. Just begin a line with “1.”, then you’ll see what happens.
  2. lalala

Bullet lists?

  • Begin a line with a dash

- lala


There was more, but now I forgot what I wanted to add.

[a minute later] Ah, now I remember:

If you want to insert a link to a forum category, like #support, just enter a hash sign (#), and a list of categories appears:

image

<edit> finished the last sentence :sweat_smile: and changed the screenshot to dark theme.</edit>

3 Likes

You can format your post using Markdown.
From Is there any reference documentation for post formatting? - #2 by mcwumbly - support - Discourse Meta

HTML

Markdown specifies that it works seamlessly with HTML, so we do.

However, we only support a “safe” subset of HTML. I’ll have to dig to find the specifics, but anything common you’d expect to work that isn’t crazy – like <script> – should work.

Edit: I just tried some html and it hadn’t worked.

Take a look at the date tag for localized date/time:
[date=2018-10-09 time=21:00:00 format="LLLL" timezones="Europe/Paris|America/Los_Angeles|Asia/Tokyo"]
Tuesday, October 9, 2018 9:00 PM
It’s available here:
image

If needed syntax highlighting for programming languages is available as well
```python
def fkt():
    pass
```
def fkt():
    pass
4 Likes

Wow :open_mouth: … now, if only I could use colour w/o all that other blurb …

1 Like

I just thought that I would add that you can use markdown for strikethrough:

~~strikethrough~~
strikethrough

and simple tables with column alignment:

Rank    | Level        | Rating
--------|:------------:|-------:
_25k_   | Beginner     | 997
5k      | Intermediate | 1892
**2d**  | Advanced     | 2292
Rank Level Rating
25k Beginner 997
5k Intermediate 1892
2d Advanced 2292
3 Likes

Thank you all! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Wow, that’s awesome also, thank you!


Now, if I could only use colours … for example, I have a macro for BBcode forums:

[color=red]<edit>[/color]
(Cursor is automatically moved here so I can immediately type on.)
[color=red]</edit>[/color]

Test post: resizing of larger images
Since I could not find another “sandbox” thread for testing thing, I figure I would just try things out here.

![game1|500x500](upload://sFhSWRJfWPyPG7I12xGfeHQOLmj.png) 

Regarding the diagram, I will post more about this later. Consider it under Chinese rules.

Same diagram in other sizes:

![game1|400x400](upload://sFhSWRJfWPyPG7I12xGfeHQOLmj.png) 

![game1|300x300](upload://sFhSWRJfWPyPG7I12xGfeHQOLmj.png) 

![game1|250x250](upload://sFhSWRJfWPyPG7I12xGfeHQOLmj.png) 

![game1|500x250](upload://sFhSWRJfWPyPG7I12xGfeHQOLmj.png)
2 Likes