User blog:ChaoticShadow/Introduction to editing with the Source Editor

I haven't written a blog in 2 years so here goes.

In this blog we will be exploring the features of the (much better, in my opinion,) source editor and how to do things in this editor much more efficiently than the visual ones. The source editor allows us to directly modify the "source" of the editor, hence its name.

Template and Table tutorials coming soon!™

Editing Text (Plain Text, Bolding, Italicizing)
The difference between source and visual when editing pure textual things is virtually no difference. Plain text is plain text.

However, more "advanced" things (in comparison to just plain text) like bolding, italicizing, formatting text require more than just a few button clicks.

For quick reference, italicizing and bolding:
 *  Sample text italicizes the text
 * Simply put two apostrophes (not quotation marks) before and after the text you want to italicize.
 *  Sample text bolds the text
 * Similar to italicization, you use apostrophes, but use three this time.

Creating Links
This is one of the more commonly used things: links. The syntax itself is very simple:


 * Sample page
 * This links to the "Sample page" (Sample page)
 * Sample pages
 * This also links to "Sample page" but it displays as "Sample pages" (Sample pages)
 * This is useful when the page name is singular, but you want to display it as plural
 * replace
 * This also links to "Sample page" but is displayed as "replace" (replace)
 * This is useful when there is no need to display the page's actual title; fits well when what is displayed flows well with the sentence

As you can see, all three link to "Sample page" but display differently

Images, Videos and the sort
The general syntax of displaying files is very similar to links, as they both use square brackets.

For most purposes, the following model should do well for any situation:



I will now being to explain all the elements of this model:
 * Filename - Just your file's name, verbatim (REQUIRED)
 * fileextension - This is your file's extension (png, gif, jpg, jpeg, ico, pdf, svg, odt, ods, odp, odg, odc, odf, odi, odm, ogg, ogv, oga), should be in the title of your file along with the name (REQUIRED FOR IMAGES AND SOUNDS)
 * thumb - This makes the file a thumbnail
 * caption - This adds a caption to the file, it only works when "thumb" is present
 * size - This sets the size of the file, either in px (pixels) or percent (introduced since Darwin); I believe if you only put one dimension, it sets the height, if you put both (as in 10x10px), it scales the file according to it's height as well.
 * alignment - Self explanatory, either align the file, left, right, or center
 * link= - Add the name of the page which the image will link to; leaving it blank will make the image unclickable

In the model, it is required to have at the very least for images and sound files, and  for videos.

Next will be how to combine several images into a gallery, slideshow, or slider

Galleries, Slideshows, and Sliders
Galleries, Slidershows, and Sliders are very similar in the fact that they all use the tag!)

Galleries
You can modify this gallery in several ways, namely the widths, position, columns, spacing, and orientation. All of these can be added like "widths=" and adding things in quotes ("") after the equals sign, and make sure they are inside the gallery tag!


 * Widths (widths=) - The value can be any number from 50 to 310, it automatically will be in pixels
 * Position (position=) - right, left, or center
 * Columns (columns=) - any number from 1 to 6, leaving it blank will automatically fit to the page
 * Spacing (spaing=) - small, medium, or large
 * Orientation (orientation=) = none, square, landscape, portrait

Slideshows
In order to make your gallery a slideshow, add type="slideshow" inside the tag. Slideshow has similar modifiers, but they are slightly different.


 * Crop (crop=) - Set the value to either true or false; true enables wikia's smartautocrop, while false disables it
 * Widths (widths=) - Similar to the one in galleries, but is from 200 to 500
 * Position (position=) - right, left, or center; same as generic galleries

Sliders
To make a gallery a slider, add type="slider" inside the tag.


 * Orientation (orientation=) - right or bottom, this sets the slider previews to be either on the right or the bottom.