More for Bloggers

The Remaining Second Tool-bar Tools

Remove Formatting

The “Remove formatting” button pictured at the left (it looks a bit like an old-fashioned pink-pearl eraser), does exactly what it says. However, it can be a little confusing and you may prefer to avoid it. If, on the other hand, you have a vague idea of HTML and what is happening behind the scenes, it can be quite useful. The reason it can be confusing is that the tool looks for the closest HTML tags that enclose what you have selected (or if none, the insertion point). Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose you have a paragraph and you have used one of the align-text buttons to center the text (sometimes called “ragged left and right”). Also, somewhere in the middle of that paragraph you selected a few words of text and colored them a shocking-pink. If you click so the insertion point is somewhere in that shocking-pink text and click the “Remove formatting” button, the coloring will be removed because the tags that cause the coloring are the closest to the insertion point. Now, assuming the HTML is not nested too deeply, if you click it again, the ragged left and right formatting will be removed because the paragraph tags are now the closest ones.

Quick Hint: You can use Control + Z to undo actions you have taken (without having to click a button on a tool-bar, though there is one).

Insert Custom Character

You may occasionally wish to insert a character that does not appear on your keyboard. While there may be key-combinations on your computer for special characters, they may not be easy to remember. Bridge Tools II makes it easy to insert the bridge suit symbols, but ¿what about a Spanish question? Position the insertion point where you want to insert that special character and then click the “Insert custom character” button (the Omega icon) illustrated at the left. When you have done that, the pop-up dialog shown at the right will appear.

The simplest thing is to find the character you want in the table and click on it. While you move the cursor around, hovering over characters that my eyes are too weak to see, an enlarged version will be displayed at the right of the dialog and as well, the HTML entity and its numeric code will be displayed. The latter may not be of much use to you, but the big picture can be quite helpful.

An example is illustrated below. I had rather hoped I could type something in those “HTML-Code” and “NUM-Code” areas, but no such luck 🙁

Indent and Outdent

So what is an “Outdent” anyway? If there were such a word, it sounds like something one would find on a used car. It is used by WordPress to describe reversing an “Indent” (maybe they should open an automobile body shop?).

Place the insertion point in a paragraph you want to have indented from the left margin. Then click the “Indent” button.

I did just that with this rather short paragraph. When the cursor is in an indented paragraph, the “Outdent” button is no longer inactive (grey). That is because you can click it to reverse the indenting effect. You can apply more than one indent to a paragraph and undo one or more of the previous applied indents — possibly in another editing session when the “Undo” facility no longer applies.

Undo and Redo

The remaining two buttons, illustrated at the left, perform a familiar function. The left one of the two — a counter-clockwise arrow, like winding back time — is the “Undo” button. It does exactly the same thing as pressing Control + Z on your keyboard. It saves my bacon by undoing my last mistake change. Sometimes my last mistake was to undo something. If so, I can click the “Redo” button (a back-to-the-future clockwise arrow). You can redo by pressing Control + Y on your keyboard.

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