No, no, not you!!! Just the whole lurker/post count thingy. I WISH I could post those cakes, but I can't even figure out how to do the smilies! So I just stick to the simple replys.
Phew good! I am the middle child after all, so always wanting to keep the peace & not hurt anyone's feelings!
If you want to post a smiley just click on any of the smilies on the box to the right of the message box & they will appear.
As far as posting images...well Crash taught me so you'll have to refer to his expertise when he gets back from his trip!
OK...
... here's a little tutorial on image posting and my little secrets and thoughts on it...
When you read something that triggers a thought which you'd like to illustrate - try to think of one or two words which might evoke that image.
EG... if I were thinking of "DISNEY PIRATE" ... I would go to google and click on "images" in the top left corner. Then I enter disney pirates and hit enter. NOW - a few things about the google search - right below the box where you type in search words is a safe search hot link. Mine says "Moderate SafeSearch is on" .... and this filters your search results to be "clean" - "mostly clean" or unrestricted. You might want to start on the "strict filtering" or Moderate filtering. If you have NO filtering then your search results can (or will) return a lot of images which are surprising and potentially offensive. SO that said...
if you searched for DISNEY PIRATE with a moderate safe search setting then you'll get 63,700 results in 0.32 seconds ... maybe. And you might want to wander page by page through the images til you spot something that MIGHT be suitable for what you had in mind. I posted something from the 2nd line of the first page above. You can only look at the first 50 pages of images regardless of how many results were found. And if you're looking through almost 50 pages of images then you're likely to have a LOT of time on your hands and you'll probably get an image that very few others would have found.
SO - when you spot an image of interest - click on the thumbnail size image. You should get a split page with a google area above and a lower area that might be loading a page slowly. I usually jump ahead here and click on the thumbnail sized image in the upper google area. NOW... you should get a blank page that is going to load a full sized image of what you are interested in. Once you have this image full sized you'll be able to scrutinize it for suitability. SOme important considerations:
1) is it too big or too small? If the original thumbnail size citation says its'
less than 150x150 I would think that's sort of small. On the other hand if it gets above 500x500 I would consdier that pretty big for posting here.
2), if the file were an animation then it could also be a problem. I generally do not post anything above 250K in size. Animations usually have a "GIF" at the end of their address line.
3) Fair warning.... I only find a postable image about half the time more or less. IE, I can look for an image and not come up with anything suitable. I have to CHANGE the key words in the search to narrow the options - or simply give up and try another approach entirely. So don't be too surprised if you spend a lot of time and find nothing. On the other hand - simply adding a 3rd word - like "funny" or "cartoon" to your key words can narrow the returns. I sometimes get a "Dilbert" or "snoopy" thing going .... and to get moving animations I simply add "GIF" to the search words - and with the latter I get the most challenging searches... IE, finding an animation is usually the hardest thing for me to engage in... but those results are often the most entertaining!
OK... so lets skip backwards a little again... you're looking at the full sized image and see that it is fine. Nothing offensive or inappropriate is buried in the image and the image depicted is perfect for what you have in mind. Well... what I do now (which may not be the smartest or fastest) is I do a RIGHT click on the image ... for example if you look at the semi-oval image of the
Disney cruise ship above - and do a right click you'll get a pop up menu - and at the bottom of this menu is an option for "properties". I would select this. Now you get a pop up window... and in the center is address (URL):
http://www.wdwinfo.com/images/boards/dcl3.jpg .... this is the line which you want to highlight and COPY. Highlighting is nothing more then putting your cursor at the top left of the line - depressing and holding down the left mouse button then drag the pointer across the ADDRESS line til it is highlighted in a black box. NOW - this might be a little tricky... but you want to make sure you get the ENTIRE line when highlightling the thing. You'll know you've got it all if the end of the line says JPEG or GIF. SOmetimes it works with other letters at the end - but mostly it is JPEG or GIF.
SO - once you've highlighted this line - and be careful - sometimes the address line is so long that it will not ALL appear in the pop up window. You have to scroll / highlight across the whole thing left to right and top to BOTTOM.... and in scrolling down the long line of code will SCROLL to reveal the buried portions of the address!
So - once you've got the entire address line highlighted .... copy it. A short cut to doing this is to simply hold the Ctrl (control) key down and simultaneously tap the "C" key. I usually tap the "C" ket a couple times to make sure it copies.
Now go over to where you are drafting the message on the DIS thread. Start making you message/reply and choose where you'd like to insert the image. Once a position is selected I would click an insertion point into the line where the imaghe will appear - and now I click on the little light yellow rectangle in the options above on the menu bar - it is the 2nd icon on the right from the RED "X" image - also it is 2nd from the end on the right. This will bring up an image insertion window - and there will be an entry box with the request to please enter the URL of your image. WHat I do is I highlight the "HTTP://" in the insertion box - and I hold the control button down while carefully tapping the "V" key ONCE... and only ONCE. Your images' address line should appear in the box erasing over the "http://". You may not see it all since the address line may be really long.
With this done - if you strike the ENTER key on your keyboard - the image address line should appear with bracketed HTML commands [ I M G ] and [ / I M G ] on either side of your images' address line. I deliberately exaggerrated the space between I-M-G - otherwise my example would try to load an image with a non-existant command here.
Anyways... if you've followed my instructions to this point then now if you post the message your image will appear - but it will appear flushed to the left. Often I prefer an image to be CENTERED - so I would highlight the entire line with HTML commands then strike the center justification line above. Now the HTML image line is now surrounded by HTML commands to make things inside the commands be cenetered.
At this point you might want to hit the PREVIEW button to see how it looks.
You should be ready now!
Trailing thoughts:
If you're looking for animations -
add GIF to your search words. Maybe one in 20-30 images returned will be animated if you're lucky. And then one in 20 animations will be useable. You should be careful not to post an animation that is too big or elaborate. As a really large animation might slow down the download for folks on modest connections. I generally try to keep it under 350K for animations. On rare occasion I will post a larger one if the depiction is just too good. Many times I;ll have an animation that is under 50K!!!
Anyways... I hope this helps you get started. If I have missed anything - or if someone has more efficient advice - please interject and help out with your thoughts and knowledge!
TTFN!
The GIF animation above was only 49K, and 450x200 in dimension. I found it with a search on key words "fireworks" and "gif".... and it was on page 2 of 511,000 responses found in 0.04 seconds. It was the 28th reply - I only tried / checked 3 images before I found this as suitable for what I had in mind. With practice you'll find images is fairly quick and breezy - and when you can;t find an image then just skip it and use words alone and move along...!
We've been trying to go on a cruise for a couple of years & finally we're able to make it! Never been on a cruise... but have been to WDW many, many times & DL a couple of times. You could say we're Disney geeks.... but that's a good thing. I'll check in again soon!
, Cheryl actually let me on our computer
to look at it. This is 
