It's absolutely ages since I did a freeware post. And I've been meaning to do this one for, as it happens, absolutely ages. It should be, I hope, highly useful for those who write and comment on blogs and message boards a lot, using basic html or BB code for things like bolding, italicising, quoting and creating links.
If you regularly use such code, and especially if you dislike it when you bugger up (Ah, the joys of the missing closing-tag!), or just plain don't like the way typing formatting-tags slows your typing down, I've got two freeware utilities to help you out.
Firstly comes a handy toolbar add-on for Firefox called, appropriately enough the Text Formatting Toolbar. Basically, it turns the comment-form into a small editing window, for html, BB-code and wiki-code (You swap between the three by means of a single drop-down menu in the toolbar), with buttons to assign various formatting-tags to selected text. It's pretty-well self explanatory, so I don't have much to add, really; though there are a couple of features which might not be obvious at first sight.
If you right-click your toolbar, after installing, and select 'Customise,' it'll open Firefox's drag-&-drop customisation window. In there, you'll find a button you can drag to your main toolbar, which toggles the formatting toolbar, so that you may hide it when it's not needed.
If you open the Text Formatting Toolbar's options dialogue, in the add-ons manager (type "about:addons" (without the quotes), in the URL-bar), you'll want to tick the box under 'Use Systematic HTML.' That's because screen-readers for the visually impaired read text enclosed in, for instance, <em> tags as being emphasised, whereas they'll (quite properly) ignore <i> tags as signifying a visual-presentation style.
(If I had my druthers, style-tags such as <i> and <b> would no longer be useable on comment-boards. Ho-hum.)
Upsides:
It's a browser add-on, which means it's not platform-specific.
Quick 'n' easy, and very intuitive.
Downsides:
Although the 'Toggle' button does make it unobtrusive, I would prefer to be able to place the above-mentioned four most common functions in a single drop-down from a button on the main toolbar, rather than have a whole extra toolbar. But that really is a minor quibble.
Slightly more seriously, I would really like to be able to assign keyboard-shortcuts, so as to avoid having to break off typing to play around with the mouse. Hardly the worst thing in the world, I know, but a lack nonetheless.
The major downside, obviously, is that it's browser-specific. (If anyone knows of similar add-ons for other browsers, feel free to drop a link into comments.)
So that's the in-browser option, provided you use Firefox. Next up, a bit of freeware kit that can do the same job, and much more, in any text-editing situation. It's called Phrase Express, and its primary function is to replicate the auto-correct feature of word-processing programs, system-wide. Thus, for instance, it'll correct "feild" to "field" wherever you type it; in a browser search-bar, in a basic text-editor like notepad, in a graphics program, wherever.
Unfortunately (there's always an "unfortunately," isn't there), as far as I can tell it's only available for Windows.
Just glancing through the help pages of this thing, it's obvious that it does a lot more than I've ever used it for; by the looks of it you can create macros to start other programs, open other documents and insert their contents into the one you're working on, and heaps more. Whereas I, peasant that I am, basically only use the auto-correct and clipboard cache.
As far as formatting html goes, though, that's all you'll need. A couple of examples:
I set it to replace the text-string #bl# with
<blockquote>{#cursor}</blockquote>
which not only creates those block-quote tags for me, but places the cursor (which takes the place of the curly-bracketed bit) in the centre, ready for me to start typing. However, generally when we're making block-quotes, we want to paste into them. Okay, I could just type the above, then hit Ctrl+V, but I don't need to. Instead, I made another auto-correct phrase, which replaces #pbl# with
<blockquote>{#clipboard}</blockquote>
which, provided I've already copied the text I want to quote, places that text between the block-quote tags. (Clipboard is, if you didn't know, the name of the Windows program which stores the last thing you copied.) Using hash-symbols before and after, by the way, isn't mandatory. I just wanted a symbol which doesn't usually both precede and follow anything, as a way to avoid accidental triggering of the process.
Formatting bold, italic, and so on is much the same. I select and cut the text to be formatted, type, for instance, #em# and a custom-phrase I made will correct that to <em>{#clipboard}</em>. And so on for the other tags.
You can use it for hard-to-recall html entities, too. You could, for instance, set #!?# to produce an interrobang: ‽ which, if you don't know what one is, is a combination question-mark and exclamation-mark: ‽
You can set keyboard shortcuts as well. So, for your most commonly used phrases, you don't even need to type a text-string. For instance, mine's set to produce < and > (< and >) when I hit Alt+comma and Alt+full-stop, respectively. Or, just to show you how it can save a lot of time and effort, I have a key-combination which produces:
<div style="text-indent:0; width:450px; margin:20px auto 30px; border:10px; -moz-box-shadow:4px 4px 7px gray; -webkit-box-shadow:4px 4px 7px gray; box-shadow:4px 4px 7px gray; -webkit-border-radius:5px; border-radius:5px; padding:10px; background-image:url('http://theedixieflatline.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/vid-bg.jpg');">
[youtube={#clipboard}&w=450&h={#cursor}]
</div>
…which is the chunk of code I use to make video-embeds a little prettier than standard, on my blog-posts; complete with the You Tube URL pasted into the correct place, and the cursor in position for me to add the correct height.
But, all other features, and more advanced html, aside; even if all you want right-away is a method to automate your formatting in comments, this program does the job nicely.
Upsides:
It's system-wide, so you'll have a degree of word-processor-like functionality in even the most basic of text-editors. And the whole program or individual phrases can be set to not work when you're typing in certain programs—like a word-processor, for instance, so as to avoid clashing auto-correct options.
Highly customisable: it's easy to add new words and phrases to the auto-correct list, and delete unneeded ones.
Keyboard-based shortcuts, and typing short text-strings, mean that you don't have to interrupt your typing too much, to mess around with the mouse.
Downsides:
Having browsed the help-pages for the more advanced features, I have to say they're not very newbie-friendly. A few walk-through examples—"if you do this, click this, and enter this, then this will happen"—could be useful.
Unlike the Firefox toolbar above, it's not click-and-go. You're going to have to take a little time creating the auto-correct phrases, and playing around with prefix and postfix settings (whether, for instance, the phrase should instantly trigger an auto-correct or only do so when a space has been typed after the text-string).
Several fiddlin' little features, like a tooltip-based "It looks like you're typing…" auto-complete widget that I found more hindrance than help, are turned on by default. Which, again, is a minor quibble.
Basically, you'll need time to set it up how you want it, and there's a bit of a learning curve. (Which, I'll happily admit, I quite enjoyed; but I'm strange like that.) Still, and in spite of (okay, maybe even a bit because of) the work needed to set it up, I really like this program. Which isn't to say I don't use the toolbar add-on too; sometimes the mouse is more convenient, sometimes it isn't—I like having the choice.
Over-all, then, if you use Firefox, and all you want is an easy, no-fuss click-and-go way to format text in comment-boxes and the like, I'd recommend the Text Formatting Toolbar. If you don't mind a bit more initial fuss-and-bother, Phrase Express is, I think, worth the effort, especially given the much wider scope it offers.
—Daz
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