Web Crossing Help - Quick-Edit

Contents

Overview
Example
Formatting Summary
Referencing Other Messages
Quoting from Other Messages

» Overview

Web Crossing provides a quick-editor to make it easier to add formatting to your document.

Because the text you post is reformatted and displayed in HTML by your Web browser, you need to use either raw HTML or the quick-editor to add paragraph breaks, bold, italic, centering, indented paragraphs, and bulleted paragraphs to your messages.

You do not need to know or learn the quick-editor in order to use Web Crossing. Just use your Web browser to "Go Back" to the previous page and complete your post. But, do remember to put a blank line between each paragraph, because that is how Web Crossing tells where to break paragraphs.

» Example

The quick-editor looks at the first two characters of each line to insert various formatting controls. For example, if a line starts with a "b" and a space, then the rest of that line is formatted in bold. When you enter the text:

This is some sample text
b with an important message
in it.

» Formatting Summary

Controls are the first character on a line. These format control characters must be followed by a space, except for the *, ] and >.

b - bold up to the end of the current line.
i - italic up to the end of the current line.
c - center up to the end of the current line.
* - bulleted paragraph up to the next blank line (no space needed).
] - indent the paragraph up to the next blank line (no space needed).
> - indent and use the blockquote font, up to the next blank line (no space needed).

» Referencing Other Messages

You may wish to reference a previously posted message when the message you wish to comment on is several messages back, or when you would like to refer people to a message in another discussion.

To add a link to another message, you simply:

• Copy the location of the message you wish to reference to the clipboard.

  Just click on the message number (for example, "#14") in the message heading. On the Macintosh, click and hold the mouse down and choose "Copy This Link Location". On Windows, click with the right mouse button and copy the link location to the clipboard.

• Paste the clipboard into the text area for your message.

  You will see the URL for the message, which may look something like

  http://webcrossing.com/webx?14@@Test%20Topic/5/23

» Quoting from Other Messages

You may wish to include text from a previous message, so that you can comment on some portion of a message.

To quote previously posted material:

• Copy the material to the clipboard. In most Web browsers, you can just click and drag across the desired text, then copy it to the clip.

• In the message you are posting, press Return or Enter to start a new line.

• Type the greater-than sign (>).

• Paste in the material to be quoted.

• Press Return or Enter twice to add a blank line following the quote. (If the quoted material is more than one paragraph, you must go back up and add a greater-than sign in front of each quoted paragraph, i.e. following each blank line.)

You may wish to include a reference to the message a quote came from, as describe in the previous section. In our example, this could look like:

When you can say:

Flying fish don't actually fly. (John Smith #23)

you obviously haven't studied the aerodynamics of flying fish.