stuff I noticed this week
I've dabbled in html a long time, and it's just been dabbling. Enough to be dangerous - just enough. But that has been a good thing for me here at JU, because it has enabled me to manhandle the interface when using the cute little buttons above the edit window result in things that aren't exactly what I want.
My wife has been out of town for the last week, and so I've spent more time here than normal. And in the course of that time, I noticed a couple simple things I could offer that might be helpful. And not to embarrass them, but to make sure they see this, these two tips are for straniera and Texas Wahine, respectively,but they apply to many, I am sure.
TIP 1. Keep users on your site when they click one of your links.
I was reading a post straniera wrote that had links, and I clicked one of the links and it whisked me away somewhere off of her blog. Well I didn't want that...I wanted to see the link in a new tab so I could flip back and forth between her reference and her blog. You can force this issue by NOT using the "link" button. I'll show ya how. Observe this "link code"
Using the above template, which you will type in like you see it (but changing the URL obviously), you can make links that open the link in a new tab (or in some browsers' case, a new window which is still better)
The http://www.yourlink.com part is whatever URL you are linking to. the target="new" part is what makes it open in a new tab or window. Nifty, yes? And by doing it this way, you can use your own text as the link instead of it just saying Link all over the place. (That's not a real link...don't click it 
Tip 2: Dealing with images
Texas, I noticed that the USO pictures you posted are quite large, and if you've got a really big monitor running a high resolution, you won't notice any problem. These days, the most popular desktop resolutions range from 800x600 to 1280x1024. These numbers represent pixels on your screen.
The first picture on your recent blog about your hubs is 1215 pixels wide and 1204 pixels high. The height is manageable, because we're all used to scrolling down a lot when reading blogs and replies. But the width...that can be troublesome. Here's why.
Even on my desktop resolution, which is 1280x1024, the picture would fit fine on my screen...if that's ALL I was looking at. But when we're on the JU site, part of your screen resolution is taken up by the blog navigator which is either on the right or left in a column. And that means the actual viewing area of our blogs is a good bit less than the 1215 pixel width of that photo. So when you put a picture that's too big for the viewing area, what it does is add a bottom scroll bar and now not only to people have to scroll up and down to read, they also have to scroll left and right. And a further problem is that all replies that come after will use that same oversized width, so when reading replies, you'll also have to scroll back and forth.
The good news is, you can force that picture to shrink in your blog without changing the original picture at all. Again, you'll need to manhandle things a bit and not just use the Image button above your edit window. Check out this little bit of html code.
If you enter your images into your blog using this method, you can force the width and height of them like I have done here. It's as simple as adding the little width and height arguments and plugging in the dimensions you want. NOTE: In this example, I'm entering a picture that is 800x600. That will not always work, and it won't work for the picture you have. Why? Well it's about what they call "aspect ratio".
If you don't keep the aspect ratio the same as the original, you'll either get a picture that's shorter and fatter than the original (which will stretch your hubby into a dumpy fat guy) or it will make the picture taller and narrower turning him into a giant string bean. After he returns safely home and has been treated to your home cooking for several years, you can use this to your advantage, but now let's keep him looking normal.
I just right-clicked that first picture and chose "properties" to see the dimensions. For reference, I repeat, it is 1215 wide and 1204 high. The simplest way to make it smaller without dealing with a calculator is to just divide both numbers by 2. This would be width=608 (I rounded up) and height=602. Here's the result, and as an added tip, I'll make clicking the picture link to your blog, but that's another lesson
Offered to help, and humbly so, I hope these two tips will keep users on all of your blogs and keep them from stretching out of shape. (The blogs, not the users )
Love,
Ock