Unofficial DU3 Basic HTML Reference Lookup Table

[Make7]

Last edited Sat Nov 18, 2023, 07:00 PM - Edit history (11)

Bold
[b]Text[/b]

Italic
[i]Text[/i]

Underline
[u]Text[/u]

Strikethrough
[strike]Text[/strike]

Highlight
[highlight]Text[/highlight]

Monospace font
[monospace]Text[/monospace]

Subscript
[sub]Text[/sub]

Superscript
[sup]Text[/sup]

Indented blockquote
[blockquote]Text[/blockquote]

Excerpt with light grey background
[excerpt]Text[/excerpt]

Hyperlink
No tags needed
Just paste the URL starting with http://

Hyperlink from text
[link:URL|Text]
(URL should include the http://)

Example:
[link:https://www.democraticunderground.com|DU4]

Images
No tags needed
Just paste the URL starting with http://
(Image filename must end with gif, jpg, or png file extension)

Example:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/imgs/logo.gif

Unordered Lists
[ul]
[li]Text
[li]Text
...
[/ul]

Ordered Lists
[ol]
[li]Text
[li]Text
...
[/ol]

Video Embedding (YouTube only)
No tags needed
Just paste the URL starting with https://

Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyqzPu5pX6U
https://youtu.be/VyqzPu5pX6U

Embedding Tweets
No tags needed
Just paste the URL starting with https://twitter.com

Example:
https://twitter.com/demunderground/status/823960344548806656

Embedding Toots (Mastadon social media)
No tags needed
Just paste the URL starting with https://

Example:
https://mastodon.online/@pkrugman/109718199496975168

(NOTE: this only works for a limited number of Mastodon domains)


Preventing Embedding
For YouTube videos, add t=0& after the ? in the video URL.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=0&v=VyqzPu5pX6U

For Tweets, change domain from twitter.com to x.com in URL

Example:
https://x.com/demunderground/status/823960344548806656

For Mastodon, add %3 before post ID in URL

Example:
https://mastodon.online/@pkrugman/%3109718199496975168

[rocktivity]

1. I never thought I'd miss the marquee

Last edited Sun Aug 8, 2021, 03:54 PM - Edit history (20)

Anyhoo, here's how to link to a YouTube page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?=VyqzPu5pX6U

Here's how to link to a YouTube page with a start time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1m35s&v=VyqzPu5pX6U

rocktivity

[Make7]

3. Linking to YouTube or Vimeo without embedding.

Last edited Thu Sep 5, 2013, 04:59 PM - Edit history (1)

[p class="post-edited" style="margin-top:-1.5em;"]YouTube changed their URL handling - need to use html entity instead of URL encode character

To post a link to a video on YouTube without embedding it replace the '?' with '?' (its HTML entity):

[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"][font style="color:#000099;"]http://www.youtube.com/watch[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366cc;"]?[/font]v=VyqzPu5pX6U[/font]
[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"][font style="color:#000099;"]http://www.youtube.com/watch[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366cc;"]?[/font]v=VyqzPu5pX6U[/font]

This is also possible with videos on Vimeo by adding a '%3' before the video's number:

[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"][font style="color:#000099;"]http://vimeo.com/8947397[/font]
[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"][font style="color:#000099;"]http://vimeo.com/[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366cc;"]%3[/font]8947397[/font]
This works by creating a URL encode character of the first number of the video's id.
[div style="width:100%; height:1.2em; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf;"]
I don't think there is a solution for the marquee tag on DU3 (thank goodness!).

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. How to link to YouTube giving a start time

You can't, as far as I can tell, do this and get it to embed on DU, but this allows you to specify the point at which YouTube starts showing the video (useful for a particular point from a long one. To start at 1 minute 35 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1m35s&v=VyqzPu5pX6U

The "t=XmYs" must come before the "v="; if it comes after, DU embeds the video but starts at the beginning.

[Make7]

6. There doesn't seem to be a way to embed while adding parameters.

Last edited Thu Sep 5, 2013, 05:24 PM - Edit history (3)

Which is unfortunate since there are quite a few useful parameters one can add to embedded YouTube videos. Here is a page on google that outlines them:

[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"]https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#gc-content
I could not seem to find any information on the parameters available in normal YouTube links. However, since we can't embed a video with extra parameters anyway, by using a different link format that goes to [font color="#000099"]https://www.youtube.com[/font] we can use the embedded player parameters. As an example I am going to use the [font color="#000099"]related[/font], [font color="#000099"]start[/font], [font color="#000099"]end[/font], [font color="#000099"]autoplay[/font], [font color="#000099"]autohide controls[/font], and [font color="#000099"]display fullscreen button[/font] parameters in a link:

[div style="margin-left:1.5em;"]https://www.youtube.com/v/H66LG8k5hS8?rel=0&start=41&end=64&autoplay=1&autohide=1&fs=0
It will only work with [font color="#000099"]https[/font] links in that format, it won't work as intended if the link is a regular [font color="#000099"]http[/font] address. As luck would have it, DU3 seems to not like [font color="#000099"]https[/font] links unless they are in a [font color="#000099"][link][/font] tag. So this whole thing is perhaps more effort than it is worth - but it may come in handy for a long video where only the relevant portion could be shown by specifying start and end points.
[div style="width:100%; height:1.2em; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf;"]
Adding a different link format that works better with the HTML5 player. Same parameters as above just using the embed format to unsecure YouTube site:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/H66LG8k5hS8?rel=0&start=41&end=64&autoplay=1&autohide=1&fs=1

Unfortunately the DU3 software will try to embed that, I used an html entity for the last forward slash in the URL:

[font style="color:#000099;"]http://www.youtube.com/embed[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366cc;"]/[/font]H66LG8k5hS8?rel=0&start=41&end=64&autoplay=1&autohide=1&fs=1[/font]

[JustanAngel]

36. Did you take a class?

Or is this your major? IT Tech? OK, some of it looks a little more complicated.

[maxcopper]

31. welcome & Help

Good to read

[JustanAngel]

35. Wow!

Where have you been all my life? No one ever told me this...but it is so simple. Thanks so much!!

[JUSTIN JOSEPH]

65. about myself

im justin joseph

[Scuba]

2. Bookmarked. Thank you.

[RainDog]

5. k&r n/t

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

33. What does K&R mean?

[RainDog]

34. kick and recommend

n/t means no text here.

[Ohio Joe]

7. Excellent - This should get pinned - nt

[Lugnut]

8. Yeah, it should be pinned.

This is good info that should be readily available.

[Lookz]

9. Was looking for this

+1 for pinning this

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. Would you expand this to include symbols and similar? n/t

[Make7]

11. I'm not sure precisely what you mean by symbols.

Most types of symbols that can be used here should be fairly easy to look up via a web search. I've posted the link to the w3schools standard html entity list numerous times and I recall MineralMan doing a post with accented vowels and similar language characters. There are additional pages at w3schools with those and more. If you mean something other than that, please clarify.

[annabanana]

12. Mmmph.. Thanks.(Bookmarked) I lost my old

link to this from before.

[Make7]

13. The Meta version of this thread (which came first) at archive.org:

Last edited Sun Mar 10, 2013, 10:27 AM - Edit history (1)

http://web.archive.org/web/20120419091647/http://www.democraticunderground.com/124025017

Perhaps some of the replies in that version may also be useful (e.g. imitating the [pre] tag, issues with code in signatures).

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You're our saviour! I thought that had been lost, since you had to be logged in

to see Meta (or was that just in its latter days?), so that it wouldn't be archived.

[Make7]

16. Meta was viewable to the public for about half a year or so.

Some of the Meta forum (up through May 2012) is archived over there - after that it tries (and fails) to send you to a log in screen.

I remember there being another sub-thread in the Meta HTML Reference thread - but someone else provided the answer before I saw the question and now I can't recall what it was about (font sizes? maybe). There may have been more, but I thought the signature stuff and the [pre] code was worth a link.

[Agschmid]

14. Kicked to the top! Very helpful. n/t

[Make7]

17. Problems with links and the [link: | ] tag? What to do to fix them.

Hopefully the following thread will help:

[div style=margin-left:1em;]Problems with links and the [link: | ] tag? What to do to fix them.

[Make7]

18. Bored with DU's plain gray excerpt boxes?

Here's one that can be useful for quoting a whole DU post with a title or a DU Mail:

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; padding-bottom:5px; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]TITLE GOES HERE[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"][div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"][b]TITLE GOES HERE[/b][/div][div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]MESSAGE GOES HERE[/div]

And this is what I'm using in my user style sheet (everyone's excerpts look like this in my browser):

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"][div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"][/div]

And I often use this in my own posts as a double check that my excerpt code is actually doing something (i.e. slightly different than my user style sheet excerpt code):

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"][div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"][/div]

Obviously there are too many possibilities for me to list what you can do by adding a little CSS to an div.excerpt element - for those wanting to try more, w3schools has a good CSS reference guide.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. What is "my user style sheet"? n/t

[Make7]

28. A 'user style sheet' allows you to customize the appearance of elements on a website.

Most websites use style sheets to define how things will look (e.g. fonts, text size and color, borders, alignment and placement of elements, background colors, background images, etc.). For example in DU's main style sheet you can find the rule for excerpts (inserted in a post when you hit the excerpt button or type [div class="excerpt"] [/div] into your message):

div.excerpt {
        display: block;
        background-color: #e6e6e6;
        margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
        padding: 10px;
}

A 'user style sheet' is a file that resides on your computer that will tell your browser that you want to substitute the website's style rule for a particular element with something you define yourself. Depending on the browser/platform implementing a user style sheet is very easy or virtual impossible.

Some of the things I am doing on DU with my user style sheet are: hiding signatures, adding a rounded border and drop-shadow to excerpt boxes, right justifying and hiding most of the edit text message and changing the text color to light grey, hiding the post count and profile/mail/journal/ignore icons by the username in posts....

ETA: I guess I should take a screenshot to show what posts look like when I browse DU. This is what my post (before adding this image) looked in my browser:

[div style="display:inline-block; border:8px solid #99bbff;"]

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. Cool! I didn't know that you could substitute a style sheet hosted locally for the site's.

You've given me a great jumping off point to do some additional learning. Thanks!

[davidpdx]

47. Wow, fancy stuff

I suppose the color of the box (outside) is default and can't be changed because of how it is programmed on the website.

[Make7]

48. I'm not sure what you mean by "the color of the box (outside)".

You can pretty much do whatever you want with the <div> element used for the excerpt. You can make the background, border, text, and shadow any color you wish. Use more or less of a shadow, different types of borders, more or less rounded corners, etc.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#bbddff; color:#002288; margin-left:1em; border:2px dotted #88aacc; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:6px 6px 6px #3388aa;"]&lsqb;div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#bbddff; color:#002288; margin-left:1em; border:2px dotted #88aacc; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:6px 6px 6px #3388aa;"]Your text here.&lsqb;/div]
All of this is done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). For a good reference on the subject, check out w3schools CSS reference.

If that didn't answer the question, you might have to draw me a picture. Literally.

[Ptah]

19. Thanks for this thread, Make7.

[RainDog]

20. embedded links

I know basic html - but when I try to embed using the DU way, the link doesn't show. help.

I put in the http (supplied by DU, don't use /a, as is not done in the sample, to close the link...

[Make7]

21. There are some issues with links and the [link] tag.

The main problem seems to be the inability of the DU3 software to handle certain characters in the web address and/or text portion correctly - that and it acting a little differently than it did on DU2 (e.g. here you should include the http:// part, there you were supposed to omit it).

I posted a thread about the issues that I know about here.

If you give me an example like this (with a space in the web address so it shows up as text)...

URL = http ://www.democraticunderground.com/
text = DU3's Home Page

... I'll see if I can determine what the issue might be - and get it to look like this: DU3's Home Page.

[div style="width:100%; height:1em; border-bottom:1px solid #aaaaaa;"]
If the problem is just trying to get the [div style="display:inline-block; background-color:#e6e6e6; padding:2px; border:1px solid #999999; border-radius:4px;"] link  button to put the proper code into your post, there are two ways to use it:

1. Type the text you want to make into a link in your post, highlight that text, hit the [div style="display:inline-block; background-color:#e6e6e6; padding:2px; border:1px solid #999999; border-radius:4px;"] link  button and enter the web address into the popup box. Done.
2. Hit the [div style="display:inline-block; background-color:#e6e6e6; padding:2px; border:1px solid #999999; border-radius:4px;"] link  button, enter the address into the popup box, type the text you want to link in your post and hit the [div style="display:inline-block; background-color:#e6e6e6; padding:2px; border:1px solid #999999; border-radius:4px;"] /link  button to complete.

Either method should result in code like this:

&lsqb;link:http://www.example.com|custom text]

(Of course you can always just type the code in instead of using the buttons, that's what I usually do.)

[RainDog]

22. here's the post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1120231

where I tried to link. It was supposed to say Book Savoury.

It disappeared when I did the embedded link, so I just posted it "raw."

[Make7]

23. The plus signs in the web address are making it not work right.

You can replace them with %2B (as explained here in my other thread):

[div style="color:#000066; margin-left:1em;"]&lsqb;link:http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=THIRTY[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]+[/font]WAYS[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]+[/font]OF[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]+[/font]LOOKING[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]+[/font]AT[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]+[/font]HILLARY&vci=53462510&x=56&y=19|Book Savoury]

&lsqb;link:http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=THIRTY[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%2B[/font]WAYS[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%2B[/font]OF[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%2B[/font]LOOKING[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%2B[/font]AT[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%2B[/font]HILLARY&vci=53462510&x=56&y=19|Book Savoury]
To give you:

[div style="margin-left:1em;"]Book Savoury

For that particular link, you could also use %20 for spaces instead of the plus signs:

[div style="color:#000066; margin-left:1em;"]&lsqb;link:http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=THIRTY[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%20[/font]WAYS[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%20[/font]OF[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%20[/font]LOOKING[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%20[/font]AT[font style="color:#ffffff; background-color:#3366ff;"]%20[/font]HILLARY&vci=53462510&x=56&y=19|Book Savoury]
To give you:

[div style="margin-left:1em;"]Book Savoury

[petronius]

24. Excellent thread, thank you! And now a question:

Is there any way to enter line breaks into the "About Me" box on the user profile?

[Make7]

25. I haven't been able to get any type of line break to work within the 'About Me' text.

This has been asked in the past a few times and I usually try every way I can think of to get it to work each time someone raises the issue and have yet to succeed.

Maybe post in ATA to see if they'll add some code to recognize line breaks in the 'About Me' text and have the software insert <br> tags to the html source - just like the software will in a regular post. It can't hurt to ask...

[petronius]

27. Thanks! Here's the ATA thread I started:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12591506

Maybe Elad will have some ideas...

[TexasTowelie]

30. Placing code to resize images here to avoid opening more windows.

|div style="width:20%;"| URL |/div|

Substitute braces for vertical pipe, no spaces before or after URL.

[params193]

32. html

yes very useful information

[RainDog]

39. I can't post an image in my sig line

without the code showing. above, it says no tags are needed.

I figured out I can't "direct link" or so it seems, so I have to html link. help.

[RainDog]

40. hmmm

now I can't see the url

...and now I can.

sigh

[Make7]

41. What browser are you using?

I copied the photobucket image URL into my signature and it seems to display fine in FireFox on Windows7.

Maybe just save the image and upload it to imgur.com and use a direct link from them - photobucket does some weird stuff to redirect to their website when you try to open a direct image from your browser's address bar.

Try this image link:

  http://i.imgur.com/EImCc3N.jpg

This is what I put in my signature temporarily (which seems to work - for me at least):

  http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd186/parispace/GOGREEN_zpscd5ed324.jpg

[RainDog]

42. nevermind

I got it to work with an img link. thanks!

[Make7]

43. The DU software will ignore the [IMG] tags, so it should work without them...

... at least it did for me.

[RainDog]

44. embedding video

Is it possible here to sub the "<" with "[", etc. to embed video from other places?

here's the example that's the reason I ask. I didn't try it, tho.

<iframe frameborder="0" width="480" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xhalb0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhalb0_waking-life_shortfilms" target="_blank">Waking Life</a> <i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/tvxorissinora" target="_blank">tvxorissinora</a></i>

okay, I did.

[iframe frameborder="0" width="480" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xhalb0" allowfullscreen][/iframe][br /][a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhalb0_waking-life_shortfilms" target="_blank"]Waking Life[/a] by [a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/tvxorissinora" target="_blank">tvxorissinora[/a]

you guys use "|" for anchors, tho, right?

[Make7]

45. No, an [iframe] tag won't work here. You can only embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo.

Letting people define their own inline frames on a forum would just be asking for trouble. I imagine that is why the Admins decided to give people the ability to embed videos from a couple video sharing sites by making the software recognize those links and auto-inserting the required <iframe> code for those sites. It gives people the option to embed videos but doesn't open the door to crazy stuff that might be possible by allowing the use of an <iframe>.

The anchor tag won't work either. It's not too difficult to change the <a href="URL">TEXT</a> code into [link:URL|TEXT], but once again the DU software limits what one can link to by using the [link:|] tag and parsing the contents and inserting the required <a ...></a> html in a post.

It's been quite a while since I tested for allowed html tags here to check if they added any new ones for our use, but I was pretty confident that as of my last edit to this OP every html tag that works here was listed. They do allow inline style in [div] tags so formatting options are pretty flexible, but as far as embedding content and links - they seem to want to manage that to some degree in order to prevent people (like me) from doing crazy shit.

As far as sharing videos from dailymotion, you're limited to just posting the URL:

  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhalb0_waking-life_shortfilms

[div style="width:100%;height:1.3em;border-bottom:1px solid #999999;"]
I remember seeing Waking Life in the theater when it came out - I'm a big fan of Richard Linklater's work. In fact, I think I still have a DVD of that film around here somewhere...

[tarheelsunc]

50. "Sorry, tables are not allowed "

Isn't the entire first post a table?

[Make7]

51. Well, that's kind of a joke.

I was copying the old DU2 html lookup table which has that as the last line.

The html tags for tables (<table>, <thead>, <tbody>, <th>, <tr>, <td>) are not allowed because both DU2 and DU3 use tables for their page formatting - so anyone using them in a post would almost certainly screw up the page layouts.

I used <div> tags with the display properties set to render as a table. As I was doing it, I just couldn't bring my self to omit from the table a line that said tables aren't allowed. This was commented on in the first version of this thread posted in Meta:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120419091647/http://www.democraticunderground.com/124025017#post29

(Scroll down to post #4 by hootinholler.)

So at least one person besides myself found it amusing.

[laserhaas]

52. Great Thread

[Make7]

53. Displaying Data As Tables

The html tags for tables (<table>, <thead>, <tbody>, <th>, <tr>, <td>) are not allowed here because DU uses tables for the page layouts - since anyone using them in a post would stand a good chance of messing up the page formatting those particular tags are ignored in messages by the DU software. However, there are still a few ways to present data in tables on DU.

Perhaps the easiest way is to make a table in some other program (e.g. Excel) and take a screen cap, crop it, put it on an image server and post the image. Of course then no one can copy and paste data from an image. If you want people to have the ability to copy data, you can use CSS to format text in tabular form.

The easier (but not as pretty) CSS way is to use a white-space declaration to preserve spaces on lines and space the info so it lines up vertically. (Use the &lsqb;br] tag for new lines to avoid the double-spacing introduced by the DU software.) Easiest way to do these "tables" is to use a text editor (Notepad will work) set to a monospace font and line everything up, add &lsqb;br] tags at the end of lines, then scrunch all the lines together and copy/paste that into a DU post. The basic code should look something like this:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #bfbfbf inset;"]&lsqb;div style="font-family:monospace; font-size:1.1em; white-space:pre;"]cell A1    cell A2&lsqb;br]cell B1    cell B2&lsqb;br]cell C1    cell C2&lsqb;/div]
Which will look like this:

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#ffffff; margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:0px 0px 6px #999999;"][div style="font-family:monospace; font-size:1.1em; white-space:pre;"]cell A1 cell A2[br]cell B1 cell B2[br]cell C1 cell C2

To make tables look really nice (with the ability to add borders, background colors, etc.), you can use the table values of the display property. The basic idea is this:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #bfbfbf inset;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table;"]
  &lsqb;div style="display:table-row;"]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell A1&lsqb;/div]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell A2&lsqb;/div]
  &lsqb;/div]
  &lsqb;div style="display:table-row;"]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell B1&lsqb;/div]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell B2&lsqb;/div]
  &lsqb;/div]
  &lsqb;div style="display:table-row;"]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell C1&lsqb;/div]
    &lsqb;div style="display:table-cell;"]text cell C2&lsqb;/div]
  &lsqb;/div]
&lsqb;/div]
To prevent the double line spacing, you'll have to squeeze all the &lsqb;div] elements together when you get all the data in its proper place. To have a single place to set padding, margins, etc., I'd suggest setting the spacing declarations in the display:table element and set all the others to inherit. Like so:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #bfbfbf inset;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table; padding:0em 2em 0em 0em;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell A1&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell A2&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell B1&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell B2&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell C1&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell C2&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;/div]&lsqb;/div]
Which hopefully will look like this:

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#ffffff; margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:0px 0px 6px #999999;"][div style="display:table; padding:0em 2em 0em 0em;"][div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"][div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell A1[div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell A2[div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"][div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell B1[div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell B2[div style="display:table-row; padding:inherit;"][div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell C1[div style="display:table-cell; padding:inherit;"]cell C2

It looks like more work than it actually is - most of it is just copying and pasting.

[Initech]

61. So I want to have whole paragraphs of text with images using the stylized coding. How do I do that?

When I use the code in this message it comes out like this:

[div style="font-family:monospace; font-size:1.1em; white-space:pre;"]cell A1 cell A2[br]cell B1 cell B2[br]cell C1 cell C2

And I want to use the default font, not the stylized font. How do I do that?

[ColesCountyDem]

55. With your 11th post you can start a new thread.

Just make sure there are no links that could be considered SPAM in it.

[w0nderer]

56. :-)

is there anything similar to lj-user or facebook-user tags

du-user=namehere would provide a hotlink?

[blueseas]

59. How do you post a photo from an article

Not sure what to do?

[Make7]

60. Well, it kind of depends on what device, operating system, and browser you are using.

The basic idea is to copy the web address of the image and paste the text of the URL in your post. Typically on desktop/laptop operating systems you right-click (or ctrl-click for Macs) the picture and select Copy image address (wording varies by browser). Then you just paste that URL into your post and DU software will almost always display the image when you preview and/or post it.

For mobile devices, you usually need to press and hold the image to get copy options - although sometimes you need to do an extra step to get the text of the URL instead of just a copy of the picture itself. You can usually Google questions like this to get an answer tailored for the device/browser you are using - try something like Get image URL android.

Eventually you should get an address like this to paste into your post...

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/20/us/19TORTURE-1/10TORTURE-1-master768.jpg

... which should display this when posted...

[nikibatts]

62. Thank you very much for this.

[steve2470]

64. hey Make7, for some reason all the HTML is showing now on your OP, hmm nt

[Denzil_DC]

66. Somebody above linked to an archived version that reads correctly:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120419091647/http://www.democraticunderground.com/124025017

Maybe the changes as a result of the DU hack have messed it up? The whole OP could benefit from a redo and update.

[steve2470]

67. thanks! nt

[progree]

68. Elad has said that special html tags are unlikely to return

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10138634

OP. Post formatting has been restored

21. What about things like font size and backgrounds?

26. That is unlikely to return.
The reason is that it requires user input to be translated into HTML, which is the vector that is insecure.

Thanks to Denzil_DC for the archive.org link to how it used to look, but unfortunately that's ancient history, I'm afraid
http://web.archive.org/web/20120419091647/http://www.democraticunderground.com/124025017

About the May 2017 hack attack that required all formatting to be turned off until July 2017, and is still causing special formatting to remain off, see

Democratic Underground was vandalized by a script attack on Wednesday afternoon 5/17
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10138421

[ailsagirl]

72. How do I insert a carriage return into my sig line?

Thank you

[Make7]

73. Well, if double spacing is okay, you could use an empty [blockquote] element.

Like this:

Line one of signature&lsqb;blockquote]&lsqb;/blockquote]Line two of signature

Should get you this:

Line one of signature

Line two of signature

After the 2016 Election hack they disabled quite a few html tags and special characters, so all the ways this was done prior to that do not work anymore. It used to be you could just use a html line break tag (i.e. [br]) in signatures.

There might be a way to fake it by using transparent images to force the text to be rearranged, but I don't have time to play with that idea right now. If the &lsqb;blockquote] double spacing idea doesn't let you format things how you would like, let me know and I'll try out some more ideas later.

[ailsagirl]

74. Thank you!

[sarchasm]

75. is it possible to resize an image for your sig line?

[Make7]

76. The DU stylesheet scales images down to a max height of 100 pixels or max width of 400 for sigs.

There isn't a way to get anything taller in your signature, but if you want a wider picture you could split the image into pieces and put them in a line - you'll probably need to put them in link tags to get them to join together.

The only way to bypass the signature limits would be to simply paste the image at the end of every one of your posts and not use the signature space. Although that negates the advantage of an editable signature function that allows updates to display on all your posts - past and present.

If you just need image editing software to resize a picture, try IrfanView, Paint.NET, or GIMP.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. If this response doesn't cover it, reply to explain further and please include an example image.

[sarchasm]

77. Thank you. I'm wanting to reduce the size 50% without resizing if possible.

...but if it can't be done then I will resize. Thanks again!

I want the height less than 100 px.

[muriel_volestrangler]

78. For accents like É that work in thread and post titles use "&Eacute;" etc.

Most, if not all, ASCII characters that are in the range 128 to 255 get removed by the DU code from any title. This annoyingly ends up with people being called "Jos" rather than "José" and so on. However, using the named character references works. Full list:

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/named-characters.html#named-character-references

So,
&ampEacute; for É
&ampeacute; for é
&ampacirc; for â

and so on. A bit tedious, but especially for thread titles, it can be good to get it right to avoid "who's that?" and "can't you spell their name properly?" replies.

But note that if you use 'Preview', or come back to edit your post, it'll show the actual character you want, and then you'll have to edit it again before actually posting.

Any corrections or further tips gratefully received.

[Make7]

79. Useful tip. Thanks.

I've pointed that out before in replies to people on occasion when I notice their thread titles getting mangled. Never thought to add a reply to my own html thread though. I should make more of an effort to maintain this (although when they disabled most user code, it seemed less necessary).

I really wish the Admins would fix that deletion of special characters in titles issue — it doesn't really enhance security (they probably only need to escape less than and greater than signs; single and double quotes; and the equals sign).

You can also use just about any Unicode character as an html entity in thread/reply titles too. For example, the full width equals sign ( &#xFF1D; ) is useful — it won't even disappear when you preview it first (that seems to be true for all characters above 255 (I think)).

[Lasher]

80. How to center text?

[Make7]

81. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible.

The Admins disabled a lot of the allowed user html tags after the hack in 2016 to address security concerns.

The best we can probably do currently is to use the &lsqb;blockquote] tag to indent something.

Indented with blockquote.

Or possibly multiple wide spaces ( &#x2003; ) to indent short phrases (although that may end up looking weird on the mobile view if the line wraps around).

    Indented with spaces.

I would suggest lobbying the Admins to add a &lsqb;center] tag in future updates. Perhaps a thread could be started here to get ideas from DUers and then we can point the Admins to the discussion.

EarlG wrote:

... we think it would be nice to give DU a fresh coat of paint. The current design has served us well for the past 10 years, but it is starting to show its age. This won't be a massive, total rewrite of the software, which we did when we moved from DU2 to DU3, but will be more focused on quality-of-life improvements to the site -- better navigation, easier to read, faster loading, a better mobile version, etc. We might even be able to sneak in some new features while we're at it. And don't worry, this isn't some kind of sell-out -- it will still be the DU you know and love, only even more awesome.

Again, we'll have plenty of discussions with you about it before we get there -- and this is something that will take quite some time to pull off so don't expect to see DU4 any time soon. But I wanted to let you know what we had in mind going forward.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14970926

[Lasher]

82. That's just what I thought.

This is no big deal. I was playing around with HTML tags, trying to learn something. And now I have, thanks to your good answer. Thanks!

[hlthe2b]

83. Can someone remind me how to change font color for text?

thanks

[Make7]

84. That's been disabled since the 2016 hack — like most other user formatting options.

I just tried the three ways it used to work while previewing this reply — they did not work.

Maybe the Admins will add some more formatting tags in the next upgrades... (crosses fingers)...

[hlthe2b]

85. Thanks for trying. I'd already attempted what I thought had worked before to no avail...

Oh, well...

[NNadir]

86. Over in the science forum, we'd love the old codes for superscripts and subscripts.

We miss sub and sup.

[ruet]

87. I'd Swear That DU Used To Support the Strike Tag.

[s]Strike[/s] or Strike. What gives? Hard to do a "FTFY" without.

[Make7]

88. [s]text[/s] used to work here, s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ with Unicode characters is the best alternative.

There are s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ text generators online for Facebook and Twitter.
________________________

A bunch of formatting tags that used to work here were disabled after the site was hacked during the 2016 election using formatting tags in a post.

Perhaps with the upcoming DU site update the Admins will add some more formatting codes for user posts.

[Igel]

90. This one seems fairly unobjectionable.

I have difficulty thinking an attack could be embedded in any of the HTML strikethrough tags.

[AmBlue]

89. I cannot figure out how to post a photo

... from Google Photos. When I create a link, and copy it into a post, it will not post as an image, only a link. Can anyone help me?