 |
|
|
Posted by Mark J on April 05, 2000 at 23:39:46:
Hi folks. I thought I would post a refresher on using some of the features of the Saab Network BB. So here we go...
To post a link to a website in a BB message such that it appears as a hyperlink (clickable):
1. Find the website address that you would like to post. It must start with "http://" or it will not work properly. We will refer to a web address as a "URL" which is hypergeek for "Uniform Resource Locator".
So, here is what a typical website URL looks like:
http://www.saabnet.com
2. Make sure that the address does not contain the "#" symbol, this is a placeholder and will cause the link to fail. If the URL does contain this character, remove it and anything else that follows it.
3. "Copy" the address to your computer's clipboard. To do this on Windows, highlight the address with the mouse and press Control-C on the keyboard. On Macintosh, highlight the address and press Command-C on the keyboard. The best place to find the URL for a website is in the URL field at the top of a web browser but one can "copy" from many places. The "copy" command is also available in the "edit" menu of most programs.
4. At the bottom of each BB page is a field titled "Optional Link URL". Using the mouse, place your cursor inside this field. Then "Place" the URL you copied earlier by pressing Control-V (Windows) or Command-V (Macintosh). The URL should now appear in this field. Of course, you can also type the address manually in this field instead of using the "Copy-Paste" routine.
Go ahead and try it right now. Highlight the Saabnet URL that appears a few lines up from here and copy it. Then go down to the Optional Link URL field and paste it. See? Very easy...
5. OK, the next field is titled "Link Title". The contents of this field determine how the link will appear in your message. For example, if I was adding a link to my personal saab page, I might enter "My SAAB page" because that's how I would like it to look in my post. You can enter anything you want here but something must be entered in this field for the link to work. You could even just re-paste the URL in this field if you are feeling really lazy.
6. Post the message and the link should appear at the bottom. Note that you can only post one link per message.
As an example, I added a link to Saabnet.comt to this message, you should see it below. To create it, I copy-pasted the URL "http://www.saabnet.com" into the "Optional Link URL" field. I then entered "The SAAB Network" into the "Link Title" field.
To display an image (such as a photograph) in a Saab Network BB message:
1. The image must reside on a web-page or a webpage server in order to appear in a Saabnet.comt message. If you have an image you would like to post here but it is not on a webpage, there are several free sites on the web that can host the image. www.homestead.com is one example.
2. Once a image is on such a webpage, it will have it's own unique URL. Image URLs contain either a ".jpg" or a ".gif" at the end and must start with "http://". For instance, look at the top of most Saabnet.comt pages and you will see the blue "The SAAB Network - www.saabnet.com" logo. This is an image that has it's own unique URL. In this case, the Saabnet.comt logo's URL is:
http://www.saabnet.com/tsn/tsnlogosm.gif
4. So how do you find the URL for an image?? There are different methods of finding an image's URL depending on what hardware and software you are using. For instance, in Netscape for Windows 95/98/NT, one can simply right-click anywhere on the image itself and select "Copy Image Location". This will copy the image's URL to the computer's clipboard just like we did earlier with the website URL. In Internet Explorer for Windows, one can right-click the image and select "properties" and the image's URL will appear in the properties box. On Macintosh, hold down the Command or Apple key while click-holding the image and similar choices should appear. Every program is different, so it may take some investigation to find out how to determine the URL of an image in the particular software you are using.
Once you know how to determine a image URL, you can grab images off of just about any webpage on the WWW and use it in a Saab Network BB post. All you need is the image's URL. Note however, that you can only enter one image per post.
Again, it's easy to spot an image URL because it will always have that ".jpg" or ".gif" on the end.
5. Once you have determined the URL for the image, it is simply a matter of copy-pasting it, or entering it manually into the "Optional Image URL" field at the bottom of any BB page. When you post your message, the image should appear at the top.
As an example I added an image to this post, that blue Saabnet.comt logo. First, I determined it's URL:
http://www.saabnet.com/tsn/tsnlogosm.gif
I then copy-pasted this URL into the "Optional Image URL" field at the bottom of the BB page. Simple!
Anyway, I hope this helps. I would encourage those of you who would like to try these BB tricks to practice by responding to this post. Don't be concerned about screwing up - it's the only way to learn when computers are concerned! If you have questions, feel free to email me. Now lets see those SAAB photos!!
- Mark
1984 900T
1978 99T
