Yes. Many aspects of DK5 are different from DK4.
In the interest of appealing to as wide an audience as possible—that is, to new users as well as long-time users—I will attempt to minimize the references to changes while describing what writing a diary STORY on the new site will entail. Once you get the hang of it, I think you will find that it is much more straightforward to build a new STORY with nice, appealing extra features and formatting than it used to be.
Please join me over the jump to see a LOT of what I hope are explanatory images and text to help you gain familiarity and ease with the site.
UPDATE 11/16/15
Table of Contents, so that you can see the list of topics covered within this story and then jump to the topic you want, is forthcoming.
First, let’s see how to begin a new diary post STORY, in the current nomenclature. I am going to assume that you already know how to login to your DKos account.
At the top right hand corner of the home page, you will see a bright orange rectangle with two parts, the words Blog It! and a pen icon. (Yes, the term BLOG is also often used to describe a STORY, or what has been—and still often is—fondly termed a diary.) You can get to a new STORY window by clicking on either the pen icon OR the Blog It! option as shown below.
In fact, you have more options than those by which to start a story. A little to the right of the Blog It!/pen icon, there is a pull-down menu associated with your username. If you click either on your username, your avatar, or the orange down arrow to the right of your avatar, you’ll get the same result:
Whatever way you use to get there, you will next see a new story editor window that looks like this. Place your cursor in the “Write a headline” area, and type. There’s no box surrounding your text; remember, this new story editor uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach, thus eliminating the need for a preview step.
Adding a Title Image
The next task you may complete, though it is not obligatory, is to add a title image to the top of your story. If you do add one, then it will serve as the story’s little thumbnail in the Recent Diaries list (and the Community Spotlight and Recommended lists too, for that matter). If you don’t want to have a title image, then just ignore that box altogether—or minimize it.
To start the body of your story, put your cursor next to the pen icon and the words Write your story…. and proceed just as you did with writing your headline.
But if you do choose to upload a title image, it’s relatively easy. (Please be sure, of course, that you have proper permissions for this and any other image that you upload.)
Did I already mention this? Save early, and save often! We all know how easy it is to lose a draft version, no matter how careful we try to be.
If you click on the orange mountain icon in the middle of that display area, then a display window from the Image Library will open up. IF you already have images uploaded here, so much the better. You can select My Images and see smallish thumbnails of your images, through which you can scroll in search of the appropriate one. Click on the one you want, and it will appear in an orange box. Then you can click on the large CHOOSE rectangle at the bottom of that display window, and your chosen image will appear in the Title Image area.
If you prefer, you can also search the entire Public Library for one you would like to upload to your story. Images in the Library that are available for your review are also available to be used anywhere on the site—so feel free to select one you like for your purposes.
I did not have one in My Images that I wanted to use, so I took a photo in my front yard, then I uploaded it to the Image Library. In doing so, I learned anew some other components of image management that may be useful to share here. To upload images to the Image Library:
- They must be in either jpg, png, or gif formats.
- They must be smaller than 5 MB.
- The attribution and other information you associate with each image does serve a role. As you will see when you upload your own image, the “description” field for the image will provide a hover for it. For the visually-impaired who cannot see the image at all, it is helpful also to provide language that makes it clear what is depicted in the image.
Here’s what the top part of the story page looks like, when a photo is uploaded to serve as the Title image for the story. Note the little X in the upper right-hand corner. If you decide you don’t want that Title Image any more, just click the X to remove the image. (It will show as ORANGE to you.)
As noted above, to write the text of the story, do just as you did with writing a headline—simply start at the little icon and prompt. For those of us who were accustomed to an edit window, it is indeed a little disconcerting. But I think we can adapt. Let’s continue to read about that process after the jump.
Yes, it is still possible to compose text in a different text-editing software and copy-and-paste it directly to this story editor. MANY of the formatting codes from another source should transfer here without incident—bold, italics, underline; headings; sub- and super-scripts. But at this point there is still much to be resolved, so please speak up if something you wrote elsewhere, WITH formatting compatible to the options available in this story editor, does not paste and display as you expect.
—The Toolbar
You may well have noticed some different formatting used already in the body of this diary, and even more obviously, the toolbar at the top of the story editor (which floats down with you as your story grows in length). Let’s take a quick look at SOME of those tools, and how to get at them.
Please look at the right-hand side of that toolbar, where you’ll see an arrow. The arrow points down when you have not clicked on it. When you do click on it, then a second row of tools will appear. (There were some discussions about which tool should go on which row, believe me.)
You can open both rows and leave them available to you, or you can close the second row by clicking on the arrow when it is pointing up. If you have questions about which buttons do what, put your cursor over one to read the little hover that appears. Some I think are familiar, like the B for BOLD, the I for Italic, and the U for underscore (which you can apply singly or in combination). Note that you can use them in two ways: as a toggle, that is, an on-off switch: click the button and your text will appear in this format until you click the button off. Or, you can type in normal font, then select the text you’d like to change, and click on the format button of your choice.
One more thing: as in most text editors, you can use the normal key-commands to toggle in and out of bold, italic, etc: ctrl- or command-B for bold, for example. The key shortcut for each is revealed on hover. Thus, you can format and write your diary without leaving the keyboard.
The Alignment Buttons
There are a few buttons you must be familiar with before you do much else. First, the text alignment options: left-aligned, right-aligned, or centered. They work as toggle buttons. Choose one of them, and your text will follow that format until you choose something else. One of them must be chosen, however, for you to be able to enter any text at all. (There should be a left-default set in the story editor. If it’s not present for you, please speak up.) It is also possible to select text, by paragraph, and then choose alignment for that selected text via the buttons. These alignment buttons are also relevant for positioning images, as you’ll read below.
Insert/Remove Story Break
Then there’s the new insert/remove story break line. That button looks like this:
It is the unassuming replacement for the much-appreciated divider-doodle, the little orange curlicue now of lore and memory. And of the Public side of the Image Library, where I found this one, courtesy aoeu:
You only get one of the story breaks, of course, and the opening to this story would have been WAY TOO LONG if I had waited till now to insert it. So you’ll have to take my word for it that I clicked on the button when my cursor was on the line following the last sentence of the intro!
But here, I’ll show you what the story in edit mode looked like, with a very faint gray line in the middle of the page:
You can, of course, continue to edit your text above and below that break line—or you can remove the line from that location and insert it somewhere else. You don’t need to have your cursor anywhere near the break line to get it to disappear; just click on that button and POOF! it’ll be gone. But you DO have to have your cursor at the place where you’d like it to be positioned when you click the button to insert it. A word to the wise: So what that means is that if you have already put a story break in somewhere and try to insert another one, clicking that button will remove that first one without putting a new one where you may be expecting it to go. If you click and it sticks where you expect to see it, that’s how you know you’ve done it properly.
The Header Buttons and the Insert Horizontal Line Button
Some of us write VERY LONG STORIES sometimes, which could benefit from various formatting options to help break the flow of text and images and make the post more readable. That’s the purpose of the Header buttons—H on the first row, and H3 and H4 on the second row. They work the same way as the B/I/U formatting buttons, although there is no keyboard shortcut for H3 and H4. (Yes, there has been discussion about the missing H2; we’ll see what happens.) Check ‘em out, see what you like. As you can see, in this post I’ve used H4 a few times and then a B+I selection for a subheading under that. It’s a style choice that’s completely up to you.
Another handy-dandy formatting tool is the Insert Horizontal Line button, on the bottom row. The button itself looks like this:
To me, it resembles the alignment patterns you see when you’ve just installed a new ink cartridge in your printer and make a test print to verify a good setup. Or perhaps the center dividing line for lanes of traffic. However you choose to remember it and its function, it’s worth keeping in mind. Below, you’ll see what it looks like, implemented.
It’s very faint! I don’t know if there are plans to make it heavier. As is, though, it does provide a break. To insert one, place your cursor above the place where you’d like the hairline to appear. At the end of a line of text is best, because as soon as you click on that button, the hairline will be inserted immediately, on the next line below.
If you change your mind and want to delete it, then place your cursor at the start of the next line of text following the hairline. Backspace/delete twice, and the hairline should disappear.
There are a few other buttons that merit some discussion here: link, image library, block quote, (all on the first row), and embed link (on the second).
The Link Button
If you want to link to another webpage, for whatever reason you choose, you can do so in a couple of different ways. You can simply copy and paste the URL right here into your story editor. It’ll show you a truncated URL in orange which serves as a hyperlink: www.jsonline.com/...
Or you can use the link button. Highlight the text you’d like to use as your launching point for the hyperlink, and click on the link button. (That icon ought to be familiar to everyone from a number of different platforms; it’s two interlocking links, the fifth button from the left in the top row of the toolbox.) A dialogue box will open for you, as you see captured below. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, so that subject has been on my mind. Might as well share that all with you. This link, a duplicate of the hyperlink above, takes you to a recent interview with the Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot, whose best-known song was about that disaster.
It’s a more direct process than it used to be. There is one other major improvement: the hyperlink opens by default in a new window. Hooray!
The Image Library button
This seems like an opportune moment to discuss another button, namely the Image Library. It’s the same icon, only smaller and in dark gray, as the one used for the Title Image box at the top of the story. Clicking on that button will open yet another dialogue window, to the Image Library. Please see my description above about how to manage your options within the Image Library.
And please note that this is NOT the only source from which you can obtain images to upload to your diary. The site “whitelists,” or supports, embedding from a number of different sources. A list of those approved sources can be found here—though please note that this list is “aspirational,” not necessarily reflective of actual function. A recent overview of what’s working now can be found here. Some of the embedding process is a bit buggy, depending on the source and the browser you are using. Let us know if you’re having trouble with what you’d like to do, and we’ll double-check for that particular combination of source and platform. A lot of problems are being shared, and solutions offered, in the resource diaries, as well as at the Help Desk and in the DK5 Click-by-Click Reference Manual. Thanks for your patience in the meantime!
One fun improvement in DK5 is the ability to reposition uploaded images relatively easily. Uploads will be right-justified by default. But if you want to move your image to the left or to the center, here is how you do it.
Place your cursor over the image you want to move. You’ll see first a little black arrow next to a white plus sign in a small green circle, then the name of your image in a gray text box. A four-pointed arrow box will appear in the upper left-hand corner, which will show you the hover, “Click and drag to move.” (Don’t be dismayed to see a lingering blinking cursor in the text, where you last left it.) Click anywhere on the image and then it will all be highlighted in blue. If you then click on the Center alignment button, the image will be centered, and much larger than it is either right- or left-justified. You can also use that four-arrow reposition box to move the highlighted image to another place in the story altogether, above or below where you inserted it. It’s rather nifty IMO that the text will wrap automatically around the image when you move it. If you’ve entered a caption, it will follow you too.
The Blockquote Button
Between the Link and the Left-Align button, you’ll see a button with a very large Open Quotation Mark. That’s how you block quote text.
If you click on the button, then the text where your cursor is located will immediately appear within a block quote. If the cursor is at the start of a new paragraph, then you’ll see the cursor appear within that block quote box. If your cursor is in the middle of a paragraph, or at the end of a paragraph, the whole paragraph will be in the block quote box. You can continue to type multiple paragraphs within that box if you choose.
When you want to resume typing outside that block quote box, then position your cursor outside of it: either at the start of a new paragraph of non-blockquoted text, or at the first blank line outside of the block quote. It sounds more complicated than it is.
Or, you can put text in a block quote by selecting a passage and clicking the block quote button.
If you need to nest another quote, use the tab key.
Clicking again, anywhere within that block quote box, will undo the block quote. Or positioning your cursor outside the block quote box will restore you to full text display.
Since late last night, when several fixes were deployed, links within block quoted text DO WORK. (See this story by Jason Libsch—DK5 Improvements—for more information about the other fixes.) No doubt there are more improvements to come.
A brief side note: You'll see below an application of a different but related formatting tool, the button labeled PRE for preformatted, which appears on the second row of the toolbar just below the block quote button. Text formatted that way shows up in a box with a thin border and rounded corners; the font is Courier, and the text is monospaced, meaning every character is the same width. Those who use it often will be pleased it’s available; those for whom this is new may come to appreciate it, too.
The Embed Button
You have to open the second row of the toolbar to find the Embed button. It’s on the far right, directly below the Image Library button, and it shows a forward slash between two angle brackets. Click on that button when your cursor is positioned where you want the embed to appear. You’ll see a dialogue window like this:
Now, what’s interesting is the little explanatory text that appears in this window.
Paste in the link or the embed code for a video, tweet, or allowed iframe above. You can alsopaste the url or code directly into the editor.
Try it! The embedding process really does work either way. In principle, anyway, if the platform is whitelisted. So here again is the link for that whitelist (aspirational, remember) along with a link to the recent overview. And again, if you’re having problems, please do speak up. Someone may have discovered a solution, and/or it’s an issue that the dev team is looking at—or it’s something brand new even now. Despite all the months in Beta, not everything can be resolved pre-rollout.
I’m embedding this song (in keeping with our theme for today) by copying and pasting the embed code from YouTube into the story editor right here. And there it is, just like that! Woo-hoo! (Not the greatest visual quality, but it is a live performance from 1979. Oh, my, that was a long time ago. Gordon and I were both young then.)
If you want to remove the embedded material, put your cursor over the display to see the circle-X in the upper-right hand corner, which you can use to delete it. Or if you want to reposition it, put your cursor over the display to see the four-cornered arrow in the upper left-hand corner.
There are indeed more formatting preset buttons in the toolbox than those discussed here. Please take a look and play around with them. If you’d be more comfortable with experimentation in the Beta, that’s still a possibility. (What happens in Beta stays in Beta, and Beta will disappear in a little while.) Click here to go to the Beta site.
SAVE, EDIT, PUBLISH
Save
Remember my admonition early in this story to save early and often? That’s always a good idea! Actually, there’s no need to have any content to save a story. And if you’re saving a story periodically as you are writing/creating it, there’s no need to go in and out of the story editor to do so.
Simply look to the upper right-hand corner of your page and click on the SAVE DRAFT button (white boldfaced caps on an orange background). It looks like this when you can save it.
And then it looks like this when you’ve just successfully saved it:
As always, it’s a good idea to resave after you’ve added something significant or time-consuming, and also before you venture away from the site (just in case you forget to return to save your latest version before you shut down).
So let’s say you do want to do something else besides finish your story. Save it. Make sure you see the SAVED! message in the box before you leave the page.
Edit
When you come back to edit, you’ll look for your draft via your username pulldown. You’ll see a display like this:
It’s fastest to click on the “Drafts” link, though clicking on “My Diaries” will also get you to your drafts, after you take a few more steps to reach that list.
Either way you get there, your “Current Diary Draft” page should look something like this:
When you click on your draft diary, it will open right back into the edit page for you again.
Publish Tags
Before publishing, you must give your story at least one tag. That’s not new. But what is new is that the tag window (all the way at the bottom of your story) looks different—with a small orange sales tag icon at the left—and that
- Each tag will be preceded by a hashtag (gee, I wonder why ;)
- Each tag must be alloneword. (It does help to capitalize proper nouns within that tag; case doesn’t matter for searching but it does for readability.)
- Typos in tags may lead to publishing hangups, for which you may not be warned at the time you seek to schedule later publishing. (Something yet to be worked out.)
Tagging, long an esoteric topic, deserves a story of its own, of course. Surely at least one will be written soon. For the moment, please be creative but clear.
Once you’ve added your tag(s) and saved the story one last time, you are ready to publish.
Publish
You have options here, too.
Let’s look at the information provided in the right-hand sidebar related to publishing.
The first item you may notice is the big white button with PUBLISH in orange letters. If you want to publish immediately, and directly to your own stream/blog, then that’s where you want to go. Click that white button, and you’ll see this question: Are you sure you want to publish this story now? with Cancel on the left and Publish on the right. The choice is yours.
Because this story is already so very, very long, I’m going to punt on the more complicated aspects of publishing: scheduling it for later; publishing to a group; unpublishing. A follow-up tutorial covering those related topics IN DETAIL will be posted ASAP.
For now, here are the rudiments. Above that white PUBLISH button, you’ll see a gray button with these words in white: “Add a publish group” Clicking there will reveal a list of all the groups to which you belong. Clicking on one of those groups will take your story to a group queue for publishing immediately or at a later day and time.
Below the white PUBLISH button, you’ll see two options in very small gray type. The one on the left has a trashcan with it: Delete this story. Do NOT click this unless you mean it! However, as a failsafe, you will get an inquiry whether you want to proceed with the deletion.
The one on the right has a little clock: Schedule for later. Clicking there opens a scheduling calendar for you, through which you can choose a date and time.
That’s it!
What, that’s all? I hear you thinking loudly.
Well, of course, not exactly. There are a lot of other tricks and tips you’ll get to know—sooner, if you write a lot of stories. Much of what is contained here will apply to comments, at least in terms of the base editor and formatting, but some does not. A new comment structure is also in the works, now that the overhaul of the site fundamentals is done.
A couple of items that have probably caught your eye, for example:
- A hard return automatically add additional space between paragraphs. That’s helpful in some ways, but perhaps something to relearn for those of us who became accustomed to adding an extra return.
- Several new items are pre-formatted: Tables, for instance. Some of those special features, like tables, also merit focused attention. In the meantime, there is the DK5 Click-by-Click Reference Manual to consult along with a growing list of stories from users who are already helping folks along.
It will take a little while to get familiar with the new format. I think the effort is worth it, and I hope you agree.