Blog comments: links and formatting

Hi there, readers

Over the last few months, several bloggers have mentioned to me the ability to add web links and basic formatting (bold, italic, underlining) to blog comments - something which I do fairly routinely, but many others do not. So I decided to explain the techniques, and concluded that a blog post was probably the best place to do it.

It's all about using so-called tags, which are bits of text enclosed in angle brackets < >. These are in fact elements of HTML, the language in which web pages are written, and they act as instructions to the web browser, to tell it how to display parts of the text.

For example, if you want a piece of text to be bold, you put <b> where you want the bold text to start, and </b> (note the slash '/' before the 'b') where you want the bold text to end, like this: <b>bold</b> - which should appear in the posted comment as bold. You can include more than a single word between tags, so <b>here's some bold text</b> becomes here's some bold text.

Similarly, for italics, use <i> to start, and </i> to end - <i>italics</i> - and for underlining use <u> to start and </u> to end - <u>underlining</u>.

As you can see, there's a pattern here: a tagged section of text starts with something in angle brackets, and ends with the same thing, preceded by a slash, also in angle brackets. This doesn't work for all the letters of the alphabet, but there's at least one more that you might want to use at some time, 's' for strikethrough (<s>strikethrough</s>).

"So what about links?", I hear you say. Once again, it's the same basic idea, using tags to mark off the section of text that you want to be the link. For historical reasons, the letter to use is 'a' - not 'l', as you might expect. Also, of course, you have to say where the link should go to - the web page address that's usually shown somewhere near the top of your browser window - so there's more information to go in the starting tag. Thus the format ends up being like this:

<a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger website</a>

which appears as this:

Blogger website.

Note some important bits:
- the space between the 'a' and the 'href' is necessary - the tag won't even be recognised without it;
- the 'http:' bit is also necessary - the browser won't know what to do with the link without it;
- the double quotes around the web address are probably not necessary but will help web browsers to recognise the address properly.

You can of course put any text you like between the tags, so if you want to display the actual web address as well as providing a link to it, you do something like this:

<a href="http://www.blogger.com/">http://www.blogger.com/</a>

which appears like this:

http://www.blogger.com/

Wandering slightly off the original topic, you can do more things with links than just connect to web pages: for example, you can provide a link to an e-mail address, which will open up an empty e-mail window. In this case, the 'a href=' bit is the same, but the contents of the double quotes are different, like this:

<a href="mailto:wanderingpom@orangehome.co.uk">send me e-mail</a>

which appears like this:

send me e-mail

Comments are welcome, and I'm happy for you to try out the things I've suggested in comments to this post.

Take care

Mark

A Visit To The Doctor

Hi there, readers

Thanks to all those who've commented here so far, especially with good wishes for my health. There are some snippets of actual personal news in what follows, so even the Brits might want to read it...

In my last post, I made some mention of arranging an appointment with my doctor regarding the back pain and sciatica I was suffering from. That appointment took place over a fortnight ago, and I thought it might be of interest, especially to readers from outside the UK, to describe what happened and how the health system here works. You may notice a certain amount of rhetorical flourish in what follows...

So, UK residents are supposed to registered with a GP (general practitioner) - it's not compulsory but it is recommended. The GP is supposed to be the first point of contact with the healthcare system for any non-emergency condition - they will diagnose the condition, prescribe drugs, and refer patients to other parts of the system for hospital or other treatment. There is a network of GPs across the country (one per so many thousand of the population, theoretically) so there should always be one reasonably close by. Oh, and registration with a GP is free.

I had to make a couple of phone calls in order to get an appointment at short notice, but I finally got one on the Tuesday morning - not bad after arriving home on the Sunday evening. I went along and was examined; my self-diagnosis of sciatica was confirmed. I was prescribed diclofenac, a stronger painkiller / anti-inflammatory than the over-the-counter ibuprofen and paracetamol I had been taking previously. After I had pointed out that this was the third episode of back problems in the last year, they agreed to refer me to a physiotherapy clinic for further investigation. The GP's appointment was free too.

On the way home from the GP, I called in at a chemist's (pharmacy) to get the drugs I had been prescribed. I had to wait fifteen minutes for the package to be made up (time to get some late breakfast), and I was charged £7.20 (about EUR8.00 or USD11.00 at current exchange rates). This is a flat-rate charge for any prescription, irrespective of the actual cost of the drugs, and many low-income groups are exempt from even this charge.

The diclofenac is highly effective; since starting on it, I have been mostly pain-free, and a lot more mobile than before, with detectable improvement on quite a few days.

The next step is the physiotherapy. I have now heard from the physiotherapy clinic: they want me to fill in a questionnaire, giving details of what I'm suffering from: information which I had expected my GP would forward to them! Then they will phone me to arrange the appointment - so there's still some way to go. However, when it comes, I know that the physiotherapy will be free too. If the physiotherapist identifies that some further procedure is necessary - a scan of some sort, or even an operation (a surgery, for Americans) - that, too, will be free.

So, I've now said, repeatedly, that this or that activity within the healthcare system is free. Americans in particular are probably screaming at me by now, saying "How can this possibly be so?" I am of course guilty of deliberately loose phrasing: all these things are free to users of the system. However, this vast edifice of medicine, the National Health Service (NHS), is certainly not free to operate - and the funding comes almost entirely from general taxation. I think the UK is unique in this respect: many other countries have similarly comprehensive healthcare systems, but I think they are all supported to a very significant extent by healthcare insurance for those who can afford it. In practice, I suppose, it doesn't much matter: those who can afford to pay, one way or another, contribute to cover the costs of those who cannot afford to pay. I am, though, immensely thankful that I live in a country where I have access to decent healthcare, and one where that access is not determined by my ability to pay for it.

Comments are welcome, as ever, and I'm looking forward to seeing the postbag I get from this one :-)

Take care

Mark