(File my tips in the FWIW category in case I’m mistaken. I’m not sure on some of the terminology, so there’s that as well.  or even under: GetStuffed,)  ; )

First, there’s a Subject line, followed by the body of the comment.  if one doesn’t use a few words in the Subject space, and instead only uses the big body box, some of the words repeat, making quite a jumble.

for even less jumbling/crowding, if you’re replying to someone, there’ll be an ‘@1.0.3, etc. that designation anchoring your reply to that person’s comment.  if you place your cursor just after that @(designation), hit Enter twice to begin your comment, it’s far easier to read.

when you Edit a comment, the Subject line moves to the right, and you might want to place  your cursor to the left of the first letter and backspace a bit.  also in Edit, there will be more @’s you’d might care to delete to make your comment more readable, but then again, maybe your eye/brain reads right past the jumbles that old crones like me find confusing.  but don’t remove the first @numbers, or your comment will sink to the bottom of the comment stream.

On JtC’s 10/09/2018 ‘Tuesday Open Thread and Meta-Dump’, these were a few of the issues noted in the comments section.  WindDancer13 had said:“Help File for the Reply button itself as noted above. (Several long-time users including myself did not or do not know about this feature.)”

Noted above was this great hint: ‘If one right clicks on the Reply button and chooses either Open in New Window or Open in New Tab, the page that opens only contains the Comment window and the Comment you are replying to rather than all comments.’

[it’s a great tip (only New Window worked for me), but: if you intend to reply to several comments, you’ll find the say, Firefox, minimized tabs building up in your Task Bar below.  at least for me, it can get pretty confusing, but it sure beats typing a reply into whatever word document i have open, then pasting it in.]  more from WindDancer13:

‘Explanations of the icons above the comment area might be helpful for many. the little question mark says what things are but no explanation on how to use them. I had been gone from here for an extended period of time, and it took me about two weeks to remember that I could use a hyperlink using the third icon. (I know…doh!) A Help file would have made that remembering instant and I would not have had to inconvenience readers with huge addresses.’

[are the icons above the comment box in the area called The Menu Bar?  at any rate, from right to left if you hover your mouse over them they are: help, preview, teaser break, dunno <>, quote box, dunno headings (font size bolds, etc.?), unordered list, ordered/numbered list, br=linebreak, align right, align center, align left, crossout letters, underline, italics, bold, create hyperlink, embed video, insert/edit images.

now JtC built a pretty nifty commenting system, and as he’d mentioned on his Meta-Dump:

“Let me speak of page loading speeds. A couple of things that puts c99p behind the 8 ball right out of the gate are lack of funding for a faster server, we work on a limited budget so I do what I can to get by on what we can afford. The other thing is c99p is a content rich environment with the many images and videos posted. Images and videos will always slow loading speeds down but I sure as heck don’t want to disallow them, they make c99p what it is, so we learn to work around them. Over time multi-user blogs grow to be a large size, stressing the server’s resources.”

i have no idea how to downsize images in the ‘write an essay’ software including using the C99 ‘uploader, etc. but in comments under the far left ‘insert/edit images’, this is one way to downsize them.  if i Bingle for ‘images of X’, a large array of related images pops up.  when choosing one to look at more closely, it will note The Size in pixels in the bottom left-hand corner, say 1200 x 800; take a note of it.  then when you click it again to become a stand-alone url, enter the url into the image box (you’ve already chosen), click OK, then adjust the size accordingly, say 300 x 200.  i’m pretty sure that clicking on the image enlarges it again (stand-alone?), then Go Back is required to read the comment thread.

WindDancer13 had also asked ‘How to post videos, images (including sizing restrictions), and tweets’.

in the embed in the commenting software (second from the left), click the icon, and embed the youtube/vimeo url, and click Okay.  the box allows for a size change, but i have no idea how to discover the original size.

embedding tweets: say you’re on tim anderson’s twitter account, and wish to embed a tweet.  first you click the time or date to the right of his name and twitter name to make it stand alone, like this one. on the upper right side there’s a Follow button, then a downward facing V; if you click that, choose Embed Tweet; if it has media, choose Include Media.  now given images and sizes causing slow loading speeds, i did hunt around for ways of Tweaking the embed codes to make them smaller, but the hits in my general queries failed to deliver what i’d thought they were promising.

Winddancer had also asked. ‘How to navigate the site, how to use items in your account page, how to post an essay, how to update an essay (I had a question on this one last week and still have not found out how to do it correctly).”

when you’re logged in, your My Account age is what some sites call your ‘dashboard’.

View (active tab), Drafts, Edit, My Comments, My Essays, Scheduled, Send this user a private message (by way of DM, private direct messaging). to edit an essay, click My Essays, boot up the one in question, and the Menu choices at the top are: View, Edit, Unpublish.  choose Edit, and make the changes, then click either Preview to uh…Preview your changes, or Save at the bottom.

DMs: as far as i know, you reach another user’s Dashboard by clicking on their User Names, whether as authors or in comments. their dashboards have Send User a Message on them.

again, as far as i could make out, JtC doesn’t have one, so clicking on his name gets you…twirled around in C99 space.  ; )  i’d discovered that when trying to search for this Open Thread of his.

On JtC’s thread, magiamma had noted:

“re: image processing for posting: “I use Photoshop and adjust the image size to 512 pixels wide or long depending. Set resolution to 72 dpi. Save as jpg at low quality, usually 4. Not the best image quality but saves space.”, whether that was in essays or comments, i’m not sure.

“Let me speak of page loading speeds. A couple of things that puts c99p behind the 8 ball right out of the gate are lack of funding for a faster server, we work on a limited budget so I do what I can to get by on what we can afford. The other thing is c99p is a content rich environment with the many images and videos posted. Images and videos will always slow loading speeds down but I sure as heck don’t want to disallow them, they make c99p what it is, so we learn to work around them. Over time multi-user blogs grow to be a large size, stressing the server’s resources.

magianna had said re: image processing for posting: “I use Photoshop and adjust the image size to 512 pixels wide or long depending. Set resolution to 72 dpi. Save as jpg at low quality, usually 4. Not the best image quality but saves space.”

QMS had offered: “curious as to why the little personal picture beside the name has little spinners in the corner, not that I could understand it anyway.”

enhydralutris had volunteered: “Johnny had explained that the other day.  Something to do with lazy loading pictures, iirc.”

From lookout:
‘As to DK’s question about pictures, I use the insert image link at the lower left hand corner. I like to have all the pictures I want to use selected and made lower-res. Once the image program loads, it’s easy to select and insert all the pictures I want for an essay or extended comment. That’s my approach anyway.”

please add what you know, or correct me where i’m wrong.  but if you’ve found these tips helpful, please leave $1.99 with the cashier as you go out the door…