Friday, April 2, 2010

Tricks of The Trade...

After Matt posted about Joe Friday he was wondering if there was a way to not have the whole post show up on the front page. So we did a bit of digging and found the code. So if you want your long post to only show a paragraph or so and then have the reader click on "read more" to find the rest of the post...

Like we did here.

Then the code you type is:

17 comments:

  1. One thing that may not be clear from the code is that there is a space before and after the word "more".

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  2. Can we have a code page? I mean, like, one central page with all these neato little tricks? I can't ever remember this stuff and where to find it, and I do want to USE it!
    I'd wondered about this....seems like most blogs do that "read the rest" thing. Well, that'll make Page #1 tidy, huh? :O)

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  3. monkeyweather (and all) - I've started a "Seekrit Codez" page linked at the top. The link for the page can be moved, the name changed, etc... I just did this to get the ball rolling.

    I'll add the image codes as well. mw, are there any other tech tips we should add?

    Vikram is a bit embarrassed; he was sketching out some javascript to do the "Read more" thing, not even thinking to look to see if blogspot had a built-in hack. D'oh! Vikram is a bit of a desi Tom Sawyer... ;)

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  4. Hey, that's so cool! Mr. and Mrs. Magic Fayre love us, they really do!

    Now I'm going to check out Vikram's Seekrit Codez...

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  5. I'm doing the Snoopy dance!

    img:"http://i627.photobucket.com/albums/tt358/redhawkclan/snoopyhappydance_anim.gif"

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  6. Thanks for the "Seekrit Codez" page Lewy, that's great. Can you please answer this question, how do you write the code instructions without them becoming code? I searched and searched yesterday and all I could find was to surround the code with opening bracket/closing bracket containing the words textarea. Using that ended up showing the code in a box (see my post above). How do I do it without the box?

    Can you put the answer on the seekrit codez page please???

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  7. Can't think of a thing, lewy! Everything is looking fab. Now with your Secret Code Page we can just check there regularly - ooh, thanks for putting it up top too. Nice and easy to find! :OD
    I will think if there is any neato stuff we can add....I've seen some cool widgets, but I don't know if anyone wants the page to get overloaded with slow moving thingamabobs...

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  8. Fay - Vikram documented the Seekrit Codez documentation process.

    Vikram has good news and bad news. Good news is that Vikram did a thorough job. Bad news is that Vikram did a thorough job.

    ;)

    The thing is that HTML has some baseline idiosyncrasies, and Blogger has some idiosyncrasiesof its own, and these together result in some unavoidable complexity and hassle.

    Lemme know what works for you and what doesn't; I'm happy to iterate.

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  9. Thanks Lewy, I didn't understand a word! But that's me.

    I want to be able to tell other users what code they need to do such and such.

    If I type the code in a comment it doesn't publish because it is a code.

    What I want to know is how to type the characters that make up the code without it being turned into code.

    Like I said above, I was able to publish the "read more" code by surrounding it with other stuff but it appears in a box.

    How can I type code to not appear as code?

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  10. OK, I'll try again, only simpler:

    Just type the code - except - where there is a <, type &lt; instead.

    Try that.

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  11. Like, here's how to demonstrate the code for a link:

    type this:

    &lt;a href="http://url.com">link text&lt;/a>

    and it will show up as this:

    <a href="http://url.com">link text</a>

    Try one yourself!

    And then...

    ...could you document the whole vid embed thing? Actually, I remember doing it right once, but I've forgotten where the damn width parameters go, and I have to re-figure it out every time... thanks!

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  12. Testing...

    <!-- more -->

    Aha, the lightbulb is on. So in laymans terms you replace the opening bracket with:

    ampersand
    lower case letter l
    lower case letter t
    semi-colon

    Thank you Lewy!

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  13. Fay, you got it - except the "bracket" is usually called (left or right) "angle bracket"...

    this is a left bracket: [
    this is a left angle bracket: <

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  14. Loo-ee iz gibbin' A-dawg hedakz wit deez trikz.

    I yam grateful anywaz...gibtome toolz, I can uze dem fine.

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  15. Lewy, to embed a video I just copy the embed code on You Tube. Once you hit the embed box a whole series of shaded screens (boxes) appear on the page with different sizes. The right size for us is width "480" height "295". If those dimensions are not available on the You Tube page then you can just adjust them once you have pasted the code into your post. Just replace what ever the width/height numbers are on the last line of the code to 480 and 295.

    Can you do something with that explanation for the code page?

    ReplyDelete