Ask Stibbons - Technical Questions

[Morty]

Computing tip of the week: Never go wireless.

Computing tip of the century: Never go wireless

[Doughnut Jimmy]

Stupid question but why can't I get quotes to appear in nice boxes? I've tried using the quote button but just end up with this:
[quote]not what I want[/quote]

thanks

[Tonyblack]

Stupid question but why can't I get quotes to appear in nice boxes? I've tried using the quote button but just end up with this:

not what I want

thanks

When you make your next post look at the tick boxes below the posting ara and you'll see one with a tick in saying "Disable BBCode in this post" - you need to untick this box as that's what is causing your problems.

[Doughnut Jimmy]

Thanks Tony

Disable BBCode in this post"

it works!

[Tonyblack]

It should work all the time now, as long as you don't tick that box.

[Danny B]

I have a software question. Has anyone used any (preferably free) software to merge pdf files? There seem to be a few available, but I don't know which might be the best. Ta.

I've never used any free software that does the job (it's not something I've ever had the need to do, as yet), so I'm only aware of the pro version of Adobe Acrobat, but this site...

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http://www.mergepdf.net/

...does the job online, free of charge. It's a safe and clean site and doesn't require any software downloads or subscriptions to use the service. You can merge up to ten files into one, although no individual file can be larger than 5MB. If that size limit doesn't meet your requirements, I've asked around and one of my friends recommended this software.

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http://www.pdfsam.org/

I haven't used it myself, but I'm informed that it does the job well enough, although it lacks the graphical flourish of Adobe Acrobat. (One of the pitfalls of Open Source software. Does the job, doesn't look too pretty.)

Hope one of those gives you the solution you're looking for.

[Dotsie]

Thanks, I'll have a go

[Tina a.k.a.SusanSto.Helit]

Computing tip of the week: Never go wireless.

Computing tip of the century: Never go wireless

um, why?

[Quark]

Because a wire never fails, cuts out, goes on holiday when there's the wrong type of light, overheats, is easily hacked, mysteriously forgets the network code or ignores LANs. Whereas a wireless receiver does all of the above. All. The. Time. .

[Jan Van Quirm]

Wired equipment also doesn't cost a fr*gging fortune in batteries either

[Quark]

Gah! The number of times my wireless keyboard's run out of power because it uses batteries and a solar cell. At least the wireless mouse can be plugged in...

The only downside I can see is that stretching a bright blue wire across the house from PC to PC will really hurt the decor.

[Ponder Stibbons]

What decor?

[Tonyblack]

I don't know if you all realise this, but if you highlight a word when writing a post, you can then click the B=Bold, i=italic, u=underline and the colour and size buttons to customise the word. You only need to highlight it once and even though the highlighting disappears when you click the first button, it is still actually there.

So if I typed the word 'Discworld', highlighted it and then clicked the various buttons I'd get this:

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[size=24][color=red][u][i][b]Discworld[/b][/i][/u][/color][/size]

Which would look like this: Discworld

The same goes for the other BBCode tags. Highlight the text and click on the button and the code will automatically wrap itself around the text.

I highlight 'Discworld' and click the Quote button and get this:

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[quote]Discworld[/quote]

Which looks like this:

Discworld

[Dotsie]

Top tip Tony!

[chris.ph]

im lucky to be able to type let alone do stuff like that tony