Welcome, New Users, to The Daily Kos. This Diary is intended to help you orient yourself to the site and ask questions about how to use it.
In the Body you will find some links intended to get you participating more effectively. Also in the Body this week is a discussion of Images using The Daily Kos (dKos) interface.
After that you can ask me any question you want. I don't know all the answers so if you stump me, you do. I invite those wiser than I to contribute and correct (or raise a ruckus, just don't scare people).
No permission slips needed, join us at the deep end of the pool for adult swim.
Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic mirror, tell me today, have all my friends been good at play?
I can see Howardblaju (#113422) and Matts Mom (#115088), the first and last users to join the weeks of 12/8/06 to 1/4/07, and all of you boys and girls out there in DailyKosland!
Hello Devil. Welcome to Hell.
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The Treachery of Images
Well, you can all go home now, lesson's finished.
What? Too lazy to study at Ctrl-U like I did?
Well since you insist.
First of all, how many of you think the above image is flipped horizontally and vertically? Hands? You are so wrong. It has been creatively transformed for the purposes of irony and satire intended to educate and criticise with no expectation of profit on my part or damage to the value of the original image or Wikipedia, which I think is adequately cited by the links above, but just to be sure I copied one of their suggested citations straight from the page-
René Magritte. (2007, February 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:10, February 15, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ren%C3%A9_Magritte&oldid=108306598
The Wikipedia Citations page.
Why is that so important ek?
Well, we're going to keep coming back to this image to show some of that ways you can put an image on the page and proper citation is very important to avoid copyright issues.
There have recently been 2 very good Diaries on the subject-
Thank you Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, Got a Grip , nonnie9999, mikk0 , On The Bus, pico, melvin, jlynne, and srkp23. Be extra nice to them the next time you see them.
There are a bunch of other diaries that talk about it, many of them here and here. I mentioned some in Power User's Tips II.
Advanced HTML WARNING!
It is entirely possible to make mistakes using HTML that crash a diary page for some users. In that event System Adminstrators, Front Pagers, are the only people who can repair the damage, which they do by deleting the Comment.
And then they scold me.
Unless you have total confidence in your ability to execute these techniques, and test 3 times in dead troll diaries with a bajillion comments, please, Please, PULLEEEZZEE! don't try this at home.
And never, ever use a <li> tag without a matching </li> tag. |
Manipulating your Image? Hire a Public Relations Firm!
Why do you want to do this? Because smaller is better.
First of all I don't have an unlimited flickr account. Four times a month I use the Welcome New Users Mirror and Flag Guy. Mirror is 2 472 bytes, Flag Guy is 7 130 bytes. For comparison my original image that is transformed for instructional purposes is 5 813 bytes and that's because after transforming it by flipping, I save it using a final transformation. My default JPeg compression is set for 50%.
When I work with an image I use Irfan View which has the great virture of being free. You download it to your desktop, uncompress it to your Desktop and double click Irfanview.exe. To use an image I capture it to my Desktop by Right Mouse/Save image as.../Ok. Next I Open it in Irfan View. To produce my transformed image I went Image/Vertical Flip, Image/Horizontal Flip, File/Save As...
"PipeTransformed", Save as type (*.JPG) JPEG - Files, Options...
Forget the complexity, make sure Save Quality is set at 50% and Ok, Save.
You did remember to set your save area to the Desktop, right? Oh well, I'm sure you'll find it later.
Don't ever over write your original file, you use it to control the quality.
Ah Quality. The easiest way is to compare visually. Fire up another copy of Irfan View and open "PipeTransformed". Not so shabby.
The tale of the tape (Options/Properties)-
| 300px-MagrittePipe.jpg | PipeTransformed |
Width | 300 | 300 |
Height | 232 | 232 |
Colors | 24 bpp | 24 bpp |
Size | 11 594 bytes | 5 813 bytes |
I skipped "BigPipe", which is JPeg 100%, because the controls got confusing and the file got 4 times larger. Do I look like I'm made of bandwidth?
I'm going to do one other transformation so I can create some images for the purposes of illustration. I'm going to 'Crop'.
From my transformed but not yet saved original, I point at the upper left corner of the image I wish to use and holding down the Left Mouse button move the mouse to the lower right. Edit/Crop. File/Save as... "Bowl" (1 676 bytes), "Stem" (2 100 bytes), and "NotPipe" (2045 bytes). Options/Save Quality 50%. If the area you selected is not to your liking, you can re-select the area by merely pointing again, or totally undo your last crop. Once undone it can't be re-done, only 'Cropped' again from the start.
Approved Image Hosts
from Pictures and Images in the FAQ
You must use 'Approved Image Hosts' to hold your images in order to prevent bandwidth problems and viruses, no exceptions.
I use flickr, mostly because I use Yahoo for anonymous email.
I'll not review the siging up or uploading procedure in detail, I imagine they're all different. As probably is how I get the code that I'm going to use to post my image on dKos, but it's instructive.
After I log in, I go to the page with my images. I find the one that I want to use (not very easy if you have lots, the organizational tools suck). I click on the image and am taken to a page with a menu that says "All Sizes". I click on it and on the next page is a box with this HTML code-
- <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/80477446@N00/392369056/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/392369056_bfe07f0d38_o.jpg" width="300" height="232" alt="PipeTransformed" /></a>
Now whoa there partner, don't go cutting and pasting just yet, there are some things I want to explain Lucy.
That part that says <a href=""> is the link back to your source image for the one you're going to display on page. Some people think you can over write it and use it to fulfil your copyright linking obligations. My reading of the flickr Terms of Service says- "Don't mess with what we give you."
So I never do.
You do need to have an 'Anchor' (<a href="">) tag in order to use <img src= tag that actually pastes your image on the page.
<img src=
The first thing in quotes, that stupid "http://", URL thing again, is your image, don't mess with it. Immediately following that are your Image Display Controls- width and height.
|
"Bowl" at width="149", height="146" |
So it's just like Silly Putty. If you're going to fuss like this, especially if you want to blow stuff up (and I've never pushed a noun and a verb together except for effect), you get the best results if you do it in your Image Editor (Irfan View) and post the Image in the size and proportions you wish to see it on the page.
But ek, doesn't it make big pictures little?
No. If you're busting the margin (640 pixels last I checked) it makes the other parts of the page visible. It never, ever minimizes bandwidth for the broadband impaired.
align="left" puts your image on the left. Provided you have the text to do it, the text will automatically wrap around underneath giving you a nice 'flag' effect.
hspace="5" vspace="2" have been destined for extinction forever. The problem is that they're just about the only thing keeping your words from bumping up against your images (unless you fancy tables shudder).
Then there is the very end of it- " /></a>". One too many spaces and slashes according to my original stylebook. I always take them out- "></a>"
Template for a left justified image-
- <a href="" title=""><img src="http:// ... .jpg" width="96" height="145" alt="Bowl" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="2"></a>
Right Justification is not as profound as you might think. Simply change your align= to "right" and we'll be calling you a 'centrist' in no time.
What's important about my basilisk jokes is that they amuse me.
You may notice the right marginal fringe is a little jagged. This is because your text is still left justified, but it's also big. Hmm... Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.
Template for a right justified image-
- <a href="" title=""><img src="http:// ... .jpg" width="149" height="146" alt="Stem" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="2"></a>
It's easy to be extreme left or right, <center> not so much. If you're willing to give up a little <font size> (nope, not that one neither) you can get some more control. They say the ladies ♥ it.
<table >
Nothing I have been able to discover will change your font size or the fact that it is smaller for text in a <table >. Nothing will bring back <div or <span (sniff, <span) or whatever, but you can use the table parameters to align letters, numbers, and images.
A <table > has 3 HTML tag elements-
- <table > Inititiate a Table (this can take an align= argument).
- <tr> Initiate a New Row (this takes NO arguments)
- <td > Initiate a Cell (this can take an align= argument).
And their corresponding close tags </td>, </tr>, and </table>.
There are 3 potential alignments-
- "left"
- "center"
- "right"
A Cell can contain an Image, Text or Numbers or a Link.
There are lots of possible combinations, but let's take a simple one. You want to center a caption underneath a picture.
"NotPipe" |
Template for center alignment-
<table align="center" cellpadding="7%"><tr><td align="center"><a href="" title=""><img src="http://... .jpg" width="270" height="42" alt="NotPipe"></a>
<i>"NotPipe"</i></td></tr></table>
2 things of note, cellpadding= puts a margin between Cell contents and the borders of the Cell, like a combination hspace / vspace, values of "5%" to "10%" are attractive. The Carriage Return between </a> and <i>"NotPipe"</i>. That is what puts the caption below the picture. You don't have to add extra Rows and Cells to your <table >, but you might want to.
You can do all kinds of really creative things-
| What Is a Pipe?
Can we think of it as an endless containment vessel
Traveling between two points
Of some capacity measured by time
But not necessarily carrying anything but gas or vacuum
Anything to equalize the pressure
Like a tube
Full of Trucks. | The Stars Hollow Gazette
I am so good enough to write for the Stamford Eagle Gazette Mr. Huntzberger, but your unfair criticisms have hurt my feelings. I'm going to steal a boat and sulk in the pool house while I do my community service.
My mother should understand that Danes are melancholy and tempermental and likely to stab Polonius behind the Arras.
Whiny and over-caffinated? I'll show you. You can't take me anywhere. I'll steal the locks off the Panama Canal, set Florida drifting in the Caribbean, sell Manhattan back to the Indians. Rabbits are harmless furry little woodland creatures, hmph!
### |
I am hard put to know what to do with true right aligned text except label things.
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The Treachery of Images
There are other things to talk about. Let's get started.