First of all, you'll notice that there's a little toolbar right above where you compose your message.

Now you can easily make words bold - just highlight what you want bold (or italic, or strikeout) and whoosh your text is updated.

There's a few other text formatting items up there.

Here's a handy review, starting at the left.
Globe thing with 2 chain links - Make a linkto a web site. Click this, enter the address of the site, then the text you want linked.
Envelope - Link selected text to an email address. Works the same as the Globe thing, but for email addresses.

Icon with triangle and circle. Insert an image from another web site. How to do this:

• Find an image you want to show here somewhere on the internet.
  
• Right Click on it and "View Image", then copy the web address of the image, or right-click on the image and then "Copy Image Location"
  
• Back here at the forum, click on the image icon, and paste the address

Helps you make a list with bullet points (like the list just above)

Bold, Italic, Underline & Strikeout are pretty self explanatory.
is the symbol to quote some text. Click on it and you'll see two tags - . Put your quote text in between those two tags and it will



lets you show code in a post (I used that tag to demonstrate the quote tag above).

Geek Warning. This function is for PHP tag wrapping. If that's gibberish to you, ignore it.


Add one of several smileys to the post.

Change the color of your selected text.

Now you can change the font of your ] text. Handy for online ransom notes.
[img]http://forums.equipped.org/images/markup_panel/default/fontsize.gif[/img] And if you feel the need to make your text big bigger and biggest or small and smaller, this is what you use.

There's a little pair of arrows:
[img]http://forums.equipped.org/images/markup_panel/default/smaller.gif[/img] [img]http://forums.equipped.org/images/markup_panel/default/bigger.gif[/img]

They make the area where you type your message smaller & bigger respectively.

Finally, there's POLL MANGER and FILE MANAGER added to the bottom of the message composer. You can create a poll with Poll manager and upload an image file with File Manager and these will be attached to your post.

Hope that helps!


Marty

Uh, Martin, a toolbar? What toolbar, where? Or is it only available for people who use Exploder, rather than Firefox?

Update:
Nevermind. I was in the quick reply. I hadn't hit the reply button. Silly Raven.

it's Firefox, IE and pretty much everything else.

Martin, you should have kept reading. I figured out what the problem was.

OK, I've got a question. Is there any way to tell what I have already viewed and what I haven't? On the old format they were different colors, here everything looks blue on white, except the one thing I happen to be looking at right then, which is black. Soon as I go to another one, the new one turns black, the one I just left goes back to blue. The little icons to the left look the same on all, and don't seem to change. I have already had to re-read several things. Am I missing something here???

Update: Think I answered my own question. It looks like the little file folders on the left change color. Not as easy for old eyes to see, but now I know what to look for...

Another update: Nope, that's not it. At least not completely. Went to a post that I looked at earlier this morning, all the little file folders were the same color (white), yet there were two I had not read. $%^&*(*&^%&*(*&^&*!!!

Actually, I've been ducking in and out all evening, and I can't see any patern of marking what I've read at all. I just have to look to see what has been updated since I last posted.

Worse, is that it is bumping the newest post to the default view, and that sucks IMO becuase they are out of context. I can't see a way to change it so that the oldest post is the one that it comes up with.

where is the view last 24 hours up date?

Wonderful, but

Is there a way to move the calender ..etc. from the right to the bottom ?? It is wasting too much space on the right and squeezing things too much !

It's definitely all pretty cool, but I hope folks don't get nutty with the font sizing.

It could get a little crazy trying to read posts.

I agree, calendar, "who's online" and Newest members can go on the bottom. I would move the search bar into the top menu, or completely remove it, there is already a link to search function next to FAQ.
Also agree that is hard to tell what has been read and what haven't. But, will probably get used to it.