(Note: This is intended to address technical aspects of posting to this site. I would recommend starting a new thread for discussions of style or nettiquette.)
In my time at this site, I have noticed some quirks working with the ActiveForums interface. There are ways that I have found to get what I want to display, although some of them are not obvious, and therefore I offer a few here (and more later, if any strike me as post-worthy).
One key point is that there are two interfaces for submitting a post. At the bottom of each thread, there is a Quick Reply box that can be used to write a (largely unformatted) reply, or you can click a reply (or quote) icon and get a fancy editing window with a swell WYSIWYG editor. Each one has its quirks. The Quick Reply window allows you to use codes such as [i ]/[ /i] (without spaces--I don't want them misinterpreted here), [b ]/[ /b], [u ]/[ /u], and [quote ]/[ /quote] to enter italics, bold text, underlined text, and quote blocks (all four commands work in the WYSIWYG editor as well). Firefox 2.x users will find that the spell check feature of their browser works in the Quick Reply editor, but not in the WYSIWYG editor. This can be worked around by writing or at least checking your posts in a word processing program (such as Word) prior to posting. Be careful pasting back to the editor as Word and the editor both copy and paste the formatting along with the text (more on this later).
The most handy button I have found in the headers for the editor is the hyperlink button. It is a blue-green circle with three links of a chain along the bottom. It allows you to enter a link to a webpage of your choosing (this would be great for people who routinely link to articles or who want to cross-link threads such as this one which is linked to these two).
There are two big quirks of the WYSIWYG editor that I have noticed. The first is that if you copy and paste text from another page/site/etc. it pastes it with the formatting intact. This is sometimes desirable, but in my opinion this usually creates a strange looking post. My workaround is to paste into a text editor like Notepad (Word will also preserve formatting when you paste, although you may be able to remove it at the time of pasting) and then copy and paste the now formatless text into the post. The second quirk is that when you quote a previous author, the inital edit window that comes up does not include the [ /quote] command, and so you are left to guess whether you are adding to the quote or writing beneath it. My workaround is to immediately post the quote and then edit it (upon editing the closing command can be seen). Another, perhaps better, approach would be to write your entire post and then edit it if the quote box didn't format correctly.
Note: Quote boxes look quite different from other text. They can also be nested. And nested again.
If anyone else has any tricks, I'd be glad to hear them.
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