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Trailboss
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Registration: If you register on the system, you can rig it up so when someone replies to one of your posts you can get an instant e-mail. I've used this quite a few times and like it a lot. You can also go back and edit your messages, have a personal profile ... there are probably several features that I haven't found in the software.
What's new?: The software sticks a cookie on your computer to help it track what is new since your last visit. It then tries to show you what's new with lightbulbs (lit instead of unlit) and folder colors (pink instead of yellow).
Code blocks: This software has the annoying habit of trying to reformat all of your code chunks for you. If you are going to post a code sample, put the word CODE surrounded by square brackets at the top and /CODE surrounded by square brackets at the bottom. This will preserve the indentation in a monospace font so the code stays readable.
Other forums: When I put this place together, I thought that folks with certification questions about the AWT would post those to the AWT forum. But I guess everybody would rather just post them here. I think it would be easier to find stuff if we took advantage of all the forums. But this would be strictly a voluntary thing.
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Labels: When you start off, you get labeled "greenhorn". The software has no clue how much Java experience you have, but it does know that you are new to this system. After you have posted 30 messages, your label gets changed to "ranch hand" - even on your old messages.

 
Wanderer
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I've registered, but I haven't seen the option to get an instant e-mail when someone replies to one of my posts. Where exactly is the option configured?
Also, I note that neither [ code ] nor < code > creates a monospaced font, unlike javacert.com and Marcus Green's new page. It's occasionally useful for formatting code - I sometimes like to make things line up vertically, and it doesn't work without a monospaced font.
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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Here I am going to use CODE surrounded by square brackets (no spaces)

Each i should be directly under a W.

As for the e-mail feature. I got an e-mail that said you replied to my post.
This feature is ONLY shown when you post a new topic. Not when you reply to an existing topic.
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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Obviously the W and i thing didn't work.
Now I'm trying html PRE tags
<pre>
WWWWWWWWWWWW
iiiiiiiiiiii
level 1
level 2
level 3

</pre>

better?
 
paul wheaton
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Well indenting certainly works.
I looked through the admin stuff for something allowing me to select a font for the code, and couldn't find anything. I could change the font for all of a forum, but not just for code stuff.
 
Jim Yingst
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You can indent, but the sizes of the spaces are different from sizes of letters.
Take this, which doesn't fit properly on one line (I re-edited this later to split it once so it didn't screw up the line wrap for the whole topic):
<code><pre>
public class LongClassName extends AnotherLongClassName
implements LongInterfaceName, AnotherLongInterfaceName {}
</pre></code>
(I'm using < code > and < pre > tags here.) I can break it up like this:
<code><pre>
123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
public class LongClassName extends AnotherLongClassName
implements LongInterfaceName,
AnotherLongInterfaceName {}
</pre></code>
I'm trying to make the "extends" match up with "implements", and all the class and interface names should line up (except the first). It doesn't work, because the 27 characters of "public class LongClassName " have a different length than the 27 spaces at the beginning of the following line. Not that this is the end of the world, mind you, I'm just observing that it's not actually monospace. In javacert and Marcus' sites, I could get around this using the < code > HTML tag, but it doesn't work that way here. If it can be reconfigured, great; if not, no big deal. Thanks for investigating, anyway.

[This message has been edited by Jim Yingst (edited February 01, 2000).]
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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I wonder if I pick the font

<pre>
WWWWWWWWWW
iiiiiiiiii
</pre>

[This message has been edited by Paul Wheaton (edited January 31, 2000).]
 
paul wheaton
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Okay, so there's a start. Using
FONT FACE=COURIER
and then
/FONT
but what a pain in the butt!
I'll try to find the code tied to the UBB CODE command.
 
paul wheaton
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I just changed the font for the whole forum to courier. Let's see if that helps:
<pre>
WWWWWWWWW
iiiiiiiii
</pre>
 
paul wheaton
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Pretty gross.
Any ideas on another monospaced font?
 
paul wheaton
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testing

How is this font?
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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This is the default browser font. Is it acceptable? Should I use it on all forums?
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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That was a little small. How about this?
 
Jim Yingst
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Cool. It's looking good. Of course, now my previous message makes no sense - anyone looking at it now sees that everything does indeed line up, so what was I talking about? But I can live with that.
 
Jim Yingst
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OK, I'm first posting this without disabling smilies - then, I've gone back to edit it, and switch on "disable smilies". Yet the smilies are still enabled. What's the deal?



I did verify that if I disable smilies when I first post, they are indeed disabled. But it seems like it should be possible to change it later, given that the option is presented. Probably a bug in the software outside your control, but I thought I'd mention it.
[This message has been edited by Jim Yingst (edited February 01, 2000).]
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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Already discovered and I think I reported it.
The truth is I've hacked the software so much now, I'm not too keen to upgrade.
 
paul wheaton
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The big question now is: Should we use this font on all the forums?
 
Desperado
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Whatever is chosen, beware of the horizontal scroll bar. It's supposed to be there when someone uses a PRE tag with a long sentence, but not if that tag (or equiv) is not used. The browser will wrap lines around.
And I am viewing this with 1152x864 res...
 
Jim Yingst
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Drat - I meant to delete the smilies message from this topic after I'd reposted it to the "Java Ranch" topic, but I forgot. Oh well.
As for the line wrap problem - that was my fault. In one of my previous posts I'd intentionally created a really long line, as an example of one that needed a line break. Of course, since it didn't have a line break, it had the effect of widening the document width for the whole page. I've since re-edited it, so things should look better now. As a moderator of course you can do that sort of editing on the posts of others, in case you see it happen again.
 
Tony Alicea
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I thought it was a setting somewhere that Paul set in his experiments with fonts etc...
 
paul wheaton
Trailboss
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Jim's right. The software tries to cope with long lines embedded in PRE or CODE tags.
 
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