Photo editing

It seems some people are having a lot of trouble editing photos in Blogger. So I think I might run through a few options to see what you can do.

First of all, there are several ways to upload a photo to Blogger. Most of them you get to by clicking on the little picture icon:
But not all.......

If you understand html there are other options. But for now, let's look at what happens when you click the little picture.  It offers upload options:
From this blog
From Picasa Web Albums
From your phone
From your webcam
From a URL

Now, some of you will have realised that 'From this blog' and 'From Picasa Web Albums' creates a problem after a while. Blogger limits the amount of space you can have to store your photos and you have to pay for more.
(Unless you've been clever and shrunk all your photos in the first place. I didn't - so I ran out of space pretty quickly and I'm too tight to pay for more.)
You need an app to use your phone. I shall assume if you are capable of uploading an app, you are capable of uploading a photo!
Ditto webcam.
From a URL can be very useful but BEWARE of copyright infringements.

If you have a website elsewhere (like I do) you can use the URL to insert a link.  A URL will look something like this:
http://www.historyanorak.co.uk/history/TheNewHistoryanorak/art_and_sculpture/Sculpture/rank_broadley/pix/Rankbroadley_malmsbury_wrestlers_1.jpg
and if you paste it into your text, Blogger will automatically make a link to it.
If you paste it into the space given when you use the 'From a URL' option (as above) you'll get this:

Note.  I took the photo. I own the copyright. I also own the rights to the website where it appears. If you don't fulfil those conditions GET PERMISSION before you use the picture.

There is another option.  That photo also appears on (one of) my Flickr site(s).  Flickr can give you a URL for the picture but it can also give you (under the 'share' option) HTML or BBCode.  That looks like this:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/historyanorak/161785585/" title="Malmesbury Abbey House - The Wrestlers by historyanorak, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/78/161785585_11948a0602.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Malmesbury Abbey House - The Wrestlers"></a>

But to use that you need to be in the HTML option at top left of the Blogger composer.  If you don't understand HTML, avoid using it.  (Or look here)

This post has gone on quite long enough.  Come back to the next post for stage 2.

HTML links

Auntie Anne's been asked several times this week how to make links in Blogger comments. It's really very simple.

You'll need to use something called html (that stands for hypertext markup language but you don't need to know that) which is a computer programming language.

Basically you're going to be telling the computer that you want to make a link, where you want to make the link go, and what you want to say in the bit that people click on to get there.

With html, all instructions come in pairs: switch on and switch off. And all instructions are enclosed in pointy brackets like this: <>  Directions are in inverted commas " " and instructions are switched off by using a slash like this /.

The first bit looks like this:  <a href=
The next bit is the place you want to direct to. It has to be enclosed in inverted commas.  Like this:  "http://www.flickr.com/photos/morningaj/"
Then end the instruction with a pointy bracket:  >
Now write the words you want for the link:   This is my Flickr site.
Then end the instruction like this: </a>

The whole thing looks like this:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/morningaj/">This is my Flickr site.</a>

But when you post your comment it will look like this:  This is my Flickr site.
I suggest you preview your comments the first few times you do it - just to be sure they work.