Here's a couple of interesting bbcode tricks you can use when posting.
When posting a list, most forum systems don't give you many options beyond the standard "bulleted" list. However, SMF gives you more freedom to choose what type of list you want with the new "type" parameter for the list tag. While several of these types are for international use only, here are the ones you might find useful:
- decimal-leading-zero (doesn't work in all browsers)
- lower-roman (lowercase Roman numerals)
- upper-roman (uppercase Roman numerals)
When posting a really long message, sometimes you want to refer to a particular point within that message. This is possible in SMF using the "anchor" and "iurl" tags (iurl in most cases acts just like the regular URL tag except the links open in the same window instead of a new window, and it must be used for anchors):
[anchor=anchorname]Some text goes here[/anchor]
...
...
...
...
[iurl=#anchorname]Click me![/iurl]Result:
This is where the anchor is...Click here to jump to the anchor location! (#post_anchor)
Have fun, and as always, if you have any questions, let me know.
Edit: To link directly to that anchor from another location, click on the anchor link and copy the URL that's in your browser's address bar.
Great! This is just fantastic! Thanks Michael!
You're welcome :)
Not sure what the issue is with that decimal-leading-zero type. Firefox shows it correctly, but IE just shows it as a standard bullet.
Once RC2 is out I'll show you another cool SMF tag. I would show it to you now, but it doesn't work right in RC1 (a minor bug).
We'll be looking forward to it.
Ok... As promised, the "time" tag.
Using this tag, you can specify a time, and it will automatically be adjusted according to the current user's time offset (if you specify a time zone - a list of all valid time zone abbreviations can be found here (http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/timezone.htm)).
For example... My current time offset puts me in Eastern time, so if I put a time with PST (Pacific Standard Time) as the time zone, it will display the same time adjusted for my time zone:
[time]12:00AM PST[/time]
Result: February 23, 2006, 03:00:00 AM
Because I didn't specify a date, it will assume that I mean the current date.
Likewise, if I do something like this:
[time]February 1st, 2006 12:00AM PST[/time]
I get the appropriate time adjusted again:
February 01, 2006, 03:00:00 AM
One more thing: When you preview or post the time, you will notice that your nice friendly timestamp gets replaced with a long string of numbers (in my first example, this number is 1140618600). Without getting into too much technical detail, this is simply the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970 at 12:00AM GMT (GMT = 5 hours ahead of Eastern time - more info available on the site with the timezone listings). If you want a more technical explanation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_epoch (if you're not a techy person, skip this article as it will only confuse you...).