Tips for using the forum

[John Donovan]

How to Upload a Picture from your computer

Please see the instructions for posting "inline" images here:

http://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=2.msg4040#msg4040

You can also just post images as attachments and then they will show as "thumbnails", but be aware that:

you must be logged in as a user to the forum in order to see any attachments to forum postings!

That is to say, if you are not logged in as a user, you will be able to see the inline images, but not the full attachments at the end of the postings.

[John Donovan]

Note that your "user name" can be different from your "display name". For example, my user name is "donovan" but my display name is "John Donovan".

Change in your Profile | Account Settings.

[John Donovan]

Note that "attachments" posted on the topic threads cannot be viewed unless you are a registered member *and* logged in.

[John Donovan]

Note also that images inserted into your posts using the code and Tinypic links may be deleted if they are not viewed after 90 days.

To prevent this from happening, simply create an account on Tinypic.com and your image links will never be deleted and you can manage them more easily.

[John Donovan]

Karen Wright reports that she cannot see the embedded images. She logs in and *can* see the attachments, but still no embedded images.  Might be an issue with accessing Tinypic.com from INL (Idaho National lab)?

Does anyone else have this issue?

By the way, all my embedded images are visible here:

http://tinypic.com/4duljip2

john

Karen reports that Java is disabled on all their INL computers so that may be the problem.

[wrigke]

Even if I go directly to the Tinypic website on my INL computer I cannot view the images, possibly due to the fact the INL blocks JAVA.

I can view them on my iphone (even through the INL email that ports to the phone), though from a practical standpoint they are too small. 

For me, the user forum is probably best accessed from my home computer.

Karen

[John Donovan]

For some reason when pasting text from another app such as Word or Outlook, the forum sometimes interprets single or double quote characters as an "end of file" or something. I guess I should try and figure out why this occurs!   

This will appear to truncate your post at the offending single or double quote character, so if this occurs please try replacing the single or double quote character with a manually typed character in the Post Reply text box.

Edit by John: This problem should be fixed now. Please see this post:

http://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?topic=174.msg1463#msg1463

[John Donovan]

Note that your forum status ("Student, Graduate, PostDoc, Professor and Emeritus") are based on the number of posts you make.

Right now you need 5 posts to get to "Graduate" and 10 posts to get to "Post Doc"!   
john

[John Donovan]

Best place to start browsing the forum:

If you don't check the forum every day, a good place to start is the "View most recent posts on the forum" link which is located in the lower left corner of the forum main index (just above the "More Stats" link), and accessible from this link:

http://smf.probesoftware.com/index.php?action=recent

[John Donovan]

Some of you may have noticed after posting a message to the forum that every once in a while, the post is truncated. Usually at some special character such as a hyphen, double quote or apostrophe.

Why is this?  Well the Simple Machine Forum (SMF) software that runs this site can only handle basic ASCII characters. So for example if you copy and paste text from a Microsoft Word document and the text includes Microsoft's "smart quote" characters, the forum software will end the post right there.

At first I didn't believe this could be true, but after some searching on the net, it appears be be the case.

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Why_do_I_have_partially_blank_or_missing_text_in_posts

Therefore the best solution is to always paste the text into a text editor such as NotePad or TextPad, and then re-copy and paste from there to the forum.

If you forget and see your post has missing text, simply click the "back" button on your browser and you should be able to see the original text with the offending character(s) in your post. Simply copy the entire post in the clipboard (<ctrl> c), go to the forum topic and click the Modify button to re-paste the text and this time edit the non ASCII characters before clicking Save.

Edit by John: after conversion of forum database to UTF-8, this is no longer a problem.

[Probeman]

The forum search field is now case insensitive which should help find items of interest more easily. To access *advanced* search, just click the Search button with an empty search field and then click this link:



and you will get this Advanced Search page:

[John Donovan]

As many of you know, I've used TinyPic to "host" the "in-line images" when I post a short tutorial or message to the forum.

However, as some may have noticed every once in a while, TinyPic screws up and one of my images get "appropriated" by another Tinyic account. No one at TinyPic seems to understand why this occurrs.

So first, if you come across a post in this forum and one of the pictures seems to be off-topic, out-of-place or otherwise inappropriate, please send me a private email or personal message through the forum so I can repair the incident.

Second, I haven't done this yet, but apparently a better image hosting site is PhotoBucket, but I haven't had a chance to investigate it.  Please feel free.

http://photobucket.com/

[John Donovan]

As you may know, the forum software attempts to reject membership requests from known spammer IP addresses, but as it's an "arms race" as they say, some spammers do slip through.

Then I need to try an ascertain if the membership request is legitimate or a spammer.  I can check the email address and IP address using some search tools, but sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a specific membership request is a real person interested in our forum or simply a spammer.

If you have attempted to join our forum and not had a reply back, it may be because I could not determine from your hotmail or gmail account if you are a real person or not.  If you haven't had a membership request approved and you would like to join, I would first suggest that you try to register using your university or corporate email address.  No other members (except the forum administrators) will see your actual email address, and we should be able to approve you right away.

If that doesn't work, please contact me directly by email and provide your name, professional affiliation and your reason for joining the forum. That should be enough information for us to determine that you are a real person.

[KVenance]

I can also not see the embedded images. But at least I now know it isn't just me not able to "read between the lines." We get blocked from a lot of obscure things here, though.

[John Donovan]

I can also not see the embedded images. But at least I now know it isn't just me not able to "read between the lines." We get blocked from a lot of obscure things here, though.

Hi Katherine,
I have heard from a couple of the nuclear sites that use our Probe for EPMA software, that indeed, TinyPic is blocked by their IT people.  You might be able to get your IT department to allow it for a specific IP, that is your specific computer.