Trevor

I tend to stay in my comfort zones, so there are probably dozens of normally apparent things about DVDTalk that I randomly discover as new on a regular basis.

I had never used the "new posts" button until just a couple months ago. Pretty cool thing, although I still interact with the forum mainly through emails.

Just the other day I discovered that editing text color was easier than I thought. Every time I changed a text color inside of a post I was going to the color submenu and manually selecting that color, even if the same color 20 different times in the same post. Finally noticed that the color graphic (A) remained the last color you chose, and simply clicked it changed your selected text to that same color again, no need to scroll to the color in the pick list each time.

What have you discovered lately?

Cardsfan111

I was active here for a good while before I used the new post feature, and it's my primary way of navigating the forum.

WallyOPD

I just discovered that there is a Book Talk.

The Bus

New Post Feature?

The Cow

The link next to the Seach drop-down link. That's how I generally navigate the forum.

Travis McClain

Lord, Please don't let the community at large learn about this. Amen.

The last useful feature I remember learning about was either the ability to multi-quote or to link to images; I really don't recall which I learned first. The feature I've taken the most liking to is the dancing banana emoticon, which I would absolutely love to find some way of including in my tweets. For instance, one might have read:

"Going to see @MCHammer perform at the @CincinnatiReds game 7/16! "

Trevor

Recently learned cool uses of the text commands for bolding and italicizing and underlining.

I used to just highlight what I wanted changed and then click the button in the quick edit taskbar.

Then I learned that you could highlight something and do a Control-B to bold it, a Control-I to italicize it, or a Control-U to underline it.

But I just learned that if you hit those keyboard commands before highlighting or even typing any text, your cursor defaults to in between the command. If I'm not explaining it well just try it. Click into the reply box and hit Control-b.

benedict

I've learned a fair bit here!

One tip that I recently read elswhere - and which may be useful for people reading this - is to employ the "panic button" ( available just to Premium Members?) to link to the forum list or anything else regarded as similarly helpful for one's forum-browsing experience!

The Cow

Hmm, where is this mysterious panic button config?

Cardsfan111

In the User CP, click on edit options on the menu to the left. It's about 2/3 of the way down the page under thread display options.

milo bloom

Can I make a suggestion? I find the "new posts" button occasionally useful, but on another forum there's a "my posts" button. It lists every thread you've posted in and you can click on your last post, and resume reading from that point. Is there any way to get that function here?

mkdevo

You could just click on your name and click 'find more posts by milo bloom'. Pretty sure that would achieve the same thing.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/search.php?do=finduser&u=36548

milo bloom

That means I have to find one of my posts before I can activate the thing to find my posts. My point is, on the other forum, it's right at the top and is a great way to get back into my discussions.

mkdevo

Nope. Bookmark the link I posted. That will take you right there.

benedict

But if you just saved the link as a favourite...

EDIT: mkdevo beat me to it!

Trevor

My plan for quite awhile now has been to combine these two things and make the panic button take me to a page full of DVDTalk links; my recent posts, all the threads I maintain(or used to maintain), all the Challenges, all my personal lists, etc.

I haven't gotten around to that yet of course, but I do use bookmarks in the links toolbar, all in a DVDTalk folder, for the things I mentioned. The panic button just takes me to the forums list for now.

Of course, the "use bookmarks" answer doesn't work for people who use work computers and can't add favorites or toolbars. That was my excuse until I bought a laptop.

Cardsfan111

Thanks for the idea, Trevor. I had set the panic button to go to my e-mail, but have never really used it. So I just changed it to go to the new posts link here. If I can get in the habit of clicking that, I'll save myself those valuable seconds of scrolling back up to the top of the page.

Trevor

Credit to Benedict for being the first one to mention that feature in this thread.

But yes, it does save some scrolling. I've been using it off-and-on since premium went live, but still forget about it most of the time.

I feel like there should be some easy-to-use web page making sites that cater to the following: I'd love to have a webpage of just 50-100 link buttons, going to all my most used sites. Bookmarks and toolbars are great on your personal computers, but at work where I can't change anything on the computers, a personal page of links seems like the best solution.

Cardsfan111

I just went back and read Benedict's post which I had seen before talking about the Panic Button feature, but not the specific suggestion about redirecting it elsewhere.

A very good idea indeed.

Dan

I recently discovered the "Increase Size" and "Decrease Size" buttons in the Quick Reply and Reply to Thread windows.

Trevor

Fixed.

benedict

Although "easy to use" may preclude using some free webspace to create one's pwn "bare bones" page of links, perhaps some of the existing services (unfortunately all requiring a sign-in unless you can set a permanent cookie) would fit the bill:

• https://www.google.com/bookmarks/?hl=en
• http://www.myhq.com/
• http://www.linkagogo.com/
• http://www.easybm.com/

But maybe a DVDTalk.com-hosted favourites page is something to requested from IB as a special feature for Premium members... I'll certainly flag it with our resident technical chappy.

Trevor

Thanks Benedict! Yeah, I prefer not to sign-in to anything on the work computers, used to all the time but now they are slowly changing the rules and running connections through corporate headquarters proxies.

But a DVDTalk hosted favorites page would be a very marketable special feature for premium membership imo, and a great use of the panic button.

Graftenberg

I just noticed in the bottom left in the box marked posting rules at the very bottom there are three setting that I never noticed there before called trackbacks, pingbacks, and refbacks. What are they and how are they turned on?

Trevor

Mister Peepers just taught me that the "last edited" link in the bottom left of every edited post maintains a history of every version of the post.

Edit to add: I've lost entire posts because of editing errors or forum glitches. Wish I knew of this feature earlier.