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Would you like to put a distinctive stamp on your BEA Forum posts that makes them obviously authentic? Well, there's a better way than typing your handle over and over each time you send a post. The BEA Forum supports the same simple commands your browser uses for any other Web page with text or codes for an author's signature. There are actually several ways to do it. The cheap, easy way is automatic, but not overly powerful; the high-powered method requires HTML knowledge. For the artistically inclined, a graphic signature is achievable with only one requirement: someplace to store the image so you can point to it in your post. Let's look at each method, and see what they offer. The Forum has a built-in feature to utilize a sig; write it once using UBB codes, place it in your profile, and check a box when you post. It's easy to set up, but limiting; like any basic tool, it has advantages and disadvantages. An embedded URL or email address uses the same text as the embedded link, which is redundant. Such a link opens a new window, but that's not neccessarily what you want to do. You can use bold and italic effects, but can't change the text font, size or color. Adding an image is disallowed via this method, which is probably a good thing given the propensity for some of the BEA's visitors to turn a 5Kb GIF into a 25Kb JPEG pic. Here's an example signature using each of the UBB commands, and a sample of its output:
None of these things is hard to replicate in other ways, if you're willing to learn how to use HTML. Instead of activating a checkbox, you can paste code from a saved file into the text of your post. In exchange for the added effort and knowledge you have to put in, you get more powerful and flexible output. Here's the same basic sig with some added salsa:
(Note-- these lines of code would be entered as single lines with no blank lines between them; they're broken apart here for easier reading.)
For more basic help learning HTML, start here: Other HANDS ON articles:
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