Another one for the AB editors!

[Headtime]

Paragraph spacing. When replying to a question, it would be great to be able to insert a blank line between parts of your answer. I realise that brevity is the best option when replying, however sometimes a longer answer is needed. At the moment a blank line just dissapears when posted, creating just a huge wodge of text - Very unreadable. Otherwise, I still maintain that Answerbank is possibly one of the best sites on the internet!

[j2buttonsw]

You can use html code (including italics, bold, underline and paragraph spacing) in your answers.

[chijiki]

Please excuse me for hijacking the question with a question of my own. . . can you just type html code into your postings, or do you have to be running any particular programme. Please post html instruction for dummies. (me)

[Headtime]

How exactly do you do this j2buttonsw?

[xyzzy@bok]

erm.... this could be difficult... If you remove the '_' underscores, <_BR_> Is a line break <_P_> and <_/P_> define a paragraph <_I_> and <_/I_> for italic highlighting <_B_> and <_/B_> for bold highlighting There are loads more, but haven't tried them! see http://www.daisy.co.uk/sites/BodgeIt/html.html for some of them...> from a post by Cupra

[AB Editor]

The site was first designed with simplicity in mind but it is certainly true that varying the text can really help reinforce your message.

Is it enough to learn some (simple) HTML commands? Let us know what you think. Though, as has been noted before, change here is reassuringly slow to take place ;-)

[chijiki]

I believe that one of the best attributes of this site is it's simplicity
That said, I would like to see some simple improvements to the way we can lay out answers, especially where they are particularly lengthy.
The use of simple commands like bold, italics, underline, and paragraphs would (i.m.o.) be an improvement.

Having seen some other "discussion" sites, that appear like a drunken graphic designer's conference, I'd prefer to keep the answerbank site much the way it is.

That's not to say that it can't be improved.

[chijiki]

Now I'm feeling smug because, for the very first time, I've used some HTML formatting and it worked.
Thanks to the advice given in previous answers.

[woodpam]

Oh my word - _I_ Can do it too?_/I_ _BR_ _B_No, it would appear not._/B_ But what am I doing wrong?

[chijiki]

Woodpam, it appears that you misread Xyzzy's instructions. You need the < symbol before the coded instruction letter and then the > symbol after it. No spaces between the symbol and the code letter. You don't need the underscores. He had to put them in to stop his example from being interpretted as HTML code. That's how I understand it. Hope this helps.

[mikewith]

woodpam -- you have to remove the _ rather than the < .... then you can bold to your heart's content.

[Cetti]

woodpam - This is the site Quizmonster gave me when I so envied all the clever bits everyone else could do -
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/basics.html

[lisaj]

AB Editor - if you're using PHP, try the nl2br function. It a cinch to automatically replace newlines within an answer with br tags. moreover, abuse can be avoided by limiting the number of nl's in a single answer.

[Wow. I didn't understand a word of that! Luckily, someone else here will. Thanks - AB Editor]

[Headtime]

The last answer reminds me of a phone call a colleague once received...."Can you go to 33, collect the one pasb, Summs need the Umrolliwalla pix in 11 for an OOV" H :)

[woodpam]

Right I'm having another go. I'll be delighted if it works and you'll all know how inept I really am if it doesn't.
Thanks to all of you who tried anyway!

[woodpam]

Oh nearly there!
Just have to remember to turn them off after use next time.

[Hippy]

AB is certainly a nice site, but have they switched off the HTML parser?

There should be a paragraph spacae here

And another and some bold to test my theory.

[Hippy]

No, it just appears to be multiple "P" tags. There now follow 4 such tags.

However, I suspect that they will be truncared to just a carriage return, so making paragraph spacing and therefore "de-wadging" impossible. Just an experiment. Cheers.

[lisaj]

In response to xyzzy at the top, you can insert angle brackets in html by doing ampersand,l,t,semicolon (for less than) and ampersand,g,t,semicolon (for greater than) when quoting HTML. <bt> for example.