As I mentioned last week, it is my plan to post short feature highlights as well as other tech-related items here each Tuesday.  This week it is about our Letter format and IM/texting formatting.

This feature is available across the site, and the buttons are displayed in desktop/laptop-sized windows and tablet-sized windows.  The buttons are not in the mobile browser due to space limitations.

There are two ways you can use this feature:

1. You can type everything you want to format (or paste it), highlight it and then press the format button.
2. Or you can press the format button and then type everything you want (or paste it) in the box.

This is an example of the Letter formatting.

This is an example of the IM/text formatting.

The formatting will appear as it does when you post, right in the editor.  If you are typing in the box and want to get out of it, just hit enter twice and you'll be back into the normal editor.

Please note that the formatting does vary from browser to browser and from operating system to operating system.  The Letter format is more script based to imply handwriting, while the IM/Text formatting uses monospace (Courier) to imply computerized text.  In both cases, the text is indented and put into its own box.

If you have stories that need this format, I suggest going back and editing your story accordingly.  This method does work properly with our chapter text control and won't later run afoul of formatting problems.  (it is just putting this in a format box and we then could tweak the formatting for everything tagged this way all at once, thus providing improvements to ALL stories that are properly tagged in one go.)  As time permits, the staff will clean up older stories by authors no longer with us for one reason or another.

Please let me know what you think in the comments below.  Was this feature helpful?  Did you have something else you wanted to see?  I have a list of topics I'm planning to share but I will shuffle dates around if people show a strong desire for a topic.