You may have noticed that there are two different ways to make a post. Either in the Smart Text Editor or the Visual Editor, so what does each do?
Smart Text Editor
We're really proud of this text editor because it's more then just a standard text editor. We find this the quickest way to type a reply and link to videos and pictures. We call this editor 'smart' because it automatically detects links and understands what you're linking to. So if you type www.google.com, we'll automatically make that a link for you. If you would like to put a youtube video in your post, you just have to paste in either the url of the video (at the top of your browser) or the embed code that youtube provides, either of these will work.
What's great about this editor, is that you don't need to use the embed button, you can just paste links from video and photo sharing sites, and we'll automatically embed the media right in your post! You don't have to do any work. The interface is clean and simple, so it loads very quickly.
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Visual Editor (rich text)
This is what some people call a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). It's similar to typing in Microsoft Word. If you select some text and click the 'B' icon, it becomes bold. If you select a word and click the 'link' icon (looks like a chain), a window will pop up allowing you to create a hyperlink to another webpage. Because this is a rich text editor, you can copy formatting from other webpages, emails, and even MS Word documents and it'll appear just how it looked in the other program. This can come in handy when viewing text in columns or that has color.
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Which one should I use?
We offer both of these editors to give the best of both worlds and allow you to choose which one to post with. You can switch as often as you like. We'll automatically default to the one you last submitted a post with. So if you reply to a topic with the Visual Editor then start a new topic, we'll default to the Visual Text Editor. So to set your preference, just post in the editor of your choosing.
