Adding text to animal's pages

[Misty Glen]

I just recently discovered a nifty way to add messages that the public can view to an animal's page so I thought I'd share it.

I find it useful to add such messages when animals are at auction and things like that, but in the past I've usually just stuck an image on their page that has the text I want to display. Then I realised that I could just manipulate the html used for displaying the animal's image.

For those that understand html, I'll explain it in detail, but everyone else can just skip over the next few paragraphs and go straight to the summary.

When you add an image to your animal, you type some link into the Image Link box, resulting in the code on the page turning out as:
<img src=some link> meaning that the image located at the url, some link will be displayed on the page. If instead you type some link> you can close the image brackets early, meaning that all subsequent text you type in will be displayed as text rather than contributing to the image's url. This will mean that some link>The message will end up as <img src=some link>The message> but that will mean you will end up displaying a > at the end of the text.

So instead if you type some link>The message</p so that the brackets of the last piece of code remain open you end up with <img src=some link>The message</p> which displays an image and The message without doing anything odd.

It doesn't really matter what you put for the last piece of code so long as the brackets remain open, ie: leave off the last > In this case I've chosen to use the code for a new paragraph.

So in summary, by entering the code, some link>The message</p into the box labled Image Link you will be able to display the image located at the url some link, followed by The message. You could also simplify it down to >The message</p if you don't mind something slightly odd happening with the image. Instead, simply putting a > before any text you wish to add will enable you to display some basic text on your animal's page.

For The message you can put any text and html code you like to get a great variety of effects on the animal's page.

A few things to note:
* There is a 255 character limit on whatever you type in the Image Link box.
* If you haven't included an image url, some messages will not be classed as 'valid urls'. You can 'trick' the code into thinking it is a url by having at least 2 full stops within your text, eg: >This. message. works</p If you have included an image url, make sure it starts with http://
* Using the format >The message< will display exactly the same as >The message</p in Internet Explorer, but will display as The message<> in Firefox.
* If you use the format some link>The message</p the page that comes up will display some of its code in a weird way. This will not affect game play, and is only temporary. Refreshing the page will not remove it, but the next time you load the page again it will be gone, eg: by clicking the link with the animal's name at the top of the page.

Some examples:
Using the format some link>The message</p I displayed an image and text on this animal's page: http://www.sandboxfarm.com/viewanimal.php?idkey=595173
Using the same format as above, I displayed an image, text, and link on this animal's page: http://www.sandboxfarm.com/viewanimal.php?idkey=602079
And using the simpler format >The message</p I displayed a message on this animal's page: http://www.sandboxfarm.com/viewanimal.php?idkey=592871
In the above example note what has happened as a result of no link being provided for the image. If you don't mind seeing this then leaving off the link can't hurt, but personally I find the page appears just a little bit 'cleaner' if there's an image there. In the second example I used the url for one of the forum's smilies just so there was something there.