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How much HTML/CSS can you put into a story?

LaRascasse

LaRascasse

I dream, therefore I am
Joined
Jul 1, 2011
Posts
1,638
From what I've seen, <i> <b> <u> <s> <blockquote> <a href=> work.

Can I put more stuff in as well? I'm curious about colours and fonts, but also if I can use <div> with some CSS to create partitions within the text where I can highlight important lines (think of magazines which have long articles, but a couple of blocks in the text where some catchy/key sentences are highlighted).
 
LaRascasse said:
From what I've seen, <i> <b> <u> <s> <blockquote> <a href=> work.
Click to expand...

Almost any HTML code will work; five of the six you list are allowed. <a href=> is NOT allowed and can get your story removed if reported.

Basically the other five are what is permissible within the desired "look and feel" of Literotica.

PS: anything beyond those five can be negotiated on a case by case basis, but you will need a very strong argument to deviate from Lit's standardized look.
 
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Weird Harold said:
Almost any HTML code will work; five of the six you list are allowed. <a href=> is NOT allowed and can get your story removed if reported.

Basically the other five are what is permissible within the desired "look and feel" of Literotica.

PS: anything beyond those five can be negotiated on a case by case basis, but you will need a very strong argument to deviate from Lit's standardized look.
Click to expand...

<a href=> is allowed as long as you link back to other Literotica pages. See the start of this story.
 
Bearing in mind this is essentially 'simple' board, particularly one for people to practice the craft of writing upon, why would one NEED to put all manner of codes into the text.
We're telling stories, not demonstrating HTML skills.
 
Handley_Page said:
Bearing in mind this is essentially 'simple' board, particularly one for people to practice the craft of writing upon, why would one NEED to put all manner of codes into the text.
We're telling stories, not demonstrating HTML skills.
Click to expand...

There is the story, then there is the presentation of the story. While the latter is not nearly as important as the former, if given an option, I'd like to incorporate it.

Think of it this way, Lit has a certain flexibility with the way you place text. See the Illustrated stories, you can have a small segment with text on one side and an image beside. I'm just saying instead of an image, I want to keep a catchy sentence from that same page (in larger font) over there.

Again, there are other areas which can be explored without making it an exhibition of HTML skills. For instance, wouldn't you like to put part of a text in a font which looks like a handwritten note? (As of now I just italicize it). Maybe for Halloween, have bloody notes in red with dripping fonts. It's all possible, if it is allowed.
 
We allow bolds, italics, underlines, blockquotes, and centered text. We do not do indentation, tabs, justified text, font face/color/size changes, formatted indices, boxes, columns, tables, or background color changes.

People read Lit on a variety of devices, as well as through our Android App. We need text to be as easy to read on as many platforms for as many people as possible.
 
LaRascasse said:
Again, there are other areas which can be explored without making it an exhibition of HTML skills. For instance, wouldn't you like to put part of a text in a font which looks like a handwritten note? (As of now I just italicize it). Maybe for Halloween, have bloody notes in red with dripping fonts. It's all possible, if it is allowed.
Click to expand...

Such font changes are not allowed. If having the special text is crucial, you can do what may authors do and create the text as an image. Instructions for doing so can be found here:
http://literotica.com/faq/05238710.shtml#06028542
 
Laurel said:
We allow bolds, italics, underlines, blockquotes, and centered text.
Click to expand...

Centred text used to be the <center> tag, however this was deprecated from HTML 4.01 (published 1999), and has been completely removed from HTML 5. It has to be done using CSS now, making that one a little more complicated than the others.

So to properly format text in a story we should add the following tags:
<b>Bold text</b>
<i>Italic text</i>
<u>Underlined text</u>
<blockquote>Blockquoted text</blockquote>
<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;">centred text</div>
 
i_would said:
Centred text used to be the <center> tag, however this was deprecated from HTML 4.01 (published 1999), and has been completely removed from HTML 5. It has to be done using CSS now, making that one a little more complicated than the others.

So to properly format text in a story we should add the following tags:
<b>Bold text</b>
<i>Italic text</i>
<u>Underlined text</u>
<blockquote>Blockquoted text</blockquote>
<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;">centred text</div>
Click to expand...

<center>Heading</center> still works. I once had a remnant of that tag on a story for a few hours before it was cleaned up.

<s>Text to strikethrough</s> also works on Lit.
 
All very interesting, not to say entertaining.
But without actually trying to put a story up with such things,
how does one practice getting it right ?
 
I don't think that Literotica permits much window dressing, just like any publisher. The design is the purview of the publisher, not the author. What it permits is the internally functional tailoring--primarily italics. Like any publisher, it wants its product to look uniform across the set and it doesn't want all of the silly bells and whistles formatting that distracts readers from the content.
 
What's to practice?
When you want something bold in your story you type <b>text to be bold</b>.
When you want it in italics you type <i>text to be in italics</i>.
When you want that text to be centered you type <center>text to be centered</center>.
The same for strikeout <s>text</s>.
The same for block quote <blockquote>text to blockquote</blockquote>

Then when you cut and paste your story into the submission window you check everything in the preview window and fix anything that you might have screwed up. Like leaving a </i> out so you whole story is now in italics.

And as you can see...html does not work in the forums, they have that functionality turned off.
 
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One thing to keep in mind: some readers like to customise their viewing experience via browser settings etc, either for aesthetic reasons or just for readability. Depending on which overrides which, fancy formatting may either really annoy those readers or just not be visible to them (in which case it's better if the story doesn't rely on it).
 
How much HTML/CSS can you put into a story?

The real question might be, how much HTML/CSS do you really need?
 
Bramblethorn said:
One thing to keep in mind: some readers like to customise their viewing experience via browser settings etc, either for aesthetic reasons or just for readability. Depending on which overrides which, fancy formatting may either really annoy those readers or just not be visible to them (in which case it's better if the story doesn't rely on it).
Click to expand...

Right. But the text prints on the screen like the text is gonna print. An 80 character or so wide column of text that scrolls down quite a ways before you go to the next page. Sure you can increase the size of the font or decrease it, but it's still going to be the 80 character column of text. Make it too big and you have to scroll left and right, too small you can't read it. Oh and the text is always black on a white background.

So where does the customized look come in?
 
Zeb_Carter said:
Right. But the text prints on the screen like the text is gonna print. An 80 character or so wide column of text that scrolls down quite a ways before you go to the next page. Sure you can increase the size of the font or decrease it, but it's still going to be the 80 character column of text. Make it too big and you have to scroll left and right, too small you can't read it. Oh and the text is always black on a white background.

So where does the customized look come in?
Click to expand...

The Android app will have very different layout (haven't tried that one).

Or when using greasmonkey scripts like Pagerize Literotica or Readable Literotica.
 
i_would said:
The Android app will have very different layout (haven't tried that one).

Or when using greasmonkey scripts like Pagerize Literotica or Readable Literotica.
Click to expand...

Well not all of us use FireFox. And now I will definitely stop using it. Never did like that it couldn't stop popups very well, now I have another reason.
 
Zeb_Carter said:
Right. But the text prints on the screen like the text is gonna print. An 80 character or so wide column of text that scrolls down quite a ways before you go to the next page. Sure you can increase the size of the font or decrease it, but it's still going to be the 80 character column of text. Make it too big and you have to scroll left and right, too small you can't read it.
Click to expand...

Maybe in your browser, but it certainly doesn't work that way for me in Firefox. On mine, Lit wraps to a fixed width not a fixed character count; if I increase the font size it just means fewer characters per line, for the same width. No left-right scrolling required. (And ditto in Safari, now I check.) Though the line spacing starts to look bad if I use really large fonts.

Oh and the text is always black on a white background.
Click to expand...

Nope. I can set my preferences to view the site in any combination of font, size, text and background colours that I choose. Even phosphor-green Courier on black, if I want to relive my misspent youth - see screenshots attached.

So where does the customized look come in?
Click to expand...

On Firefox, it comes in under Firefox->Preferences->Content->Fonts & Colors.
 

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Bramblethorn said:
Maybe in your browser, but it certainly doesn't work that way for me in Firefox. On mine, Lit wraps to a fixed width not a fixed character count; if I increase the font size it just means fewer characters per line, for the same width. No left-right scrolling required. (And ditto in Safari, now I check.) Though the line spacing starts to look bad if I use really large fonts.



Nope. I can set my preferences to view the site in any combination of font, size, text and background colours that I choose. Even phosphor-green Courier on black, if I want to relive my misspent youth - see screenshots attached.



On Firefox, it comes in under Firefox->Preferences->Content->Fonts & Colors.
Click to expand...

And like I said, not everyone uses FireFox

4461012+_ec9ae1bc8c7d9e9117f5bd02c68fcbc0.jpg
 
Zeb_Carter said:
And like I said, not everyone uses FireFox
Click to expand...

Nope. But you were addressing me, and I do.

Even if that was intended as a generic "you"... AFAICT most major browsers offer similar options for customisation, either out of the box or via extensions/plugins. Chrome and IE certainly do - between those three that's already 80-90% of the browser market.

I'm curious - which browser are you using that doesn't let you customise, and that forces Lit to display at ~ 80 characters per line regardless of font?
 
Bramblethorn said:
Nope. But you were addressing me, and I do.

Even if that was intended as a generic "you"... AFAICT most major browsers offer similar options for customisation, either out of the box or via extensions/plugins. Chrome and IE certainly do - between those three that's already 80-90% of the browser market.

I'm curious - which browser are you using that doesn't let you customise, and that forces Lit to display at ~ 80 characters per line regardless of font?
Click to expand...

The best there is Chrome and it has served me well. A lot better than IE and Firefox. As for apps to modify what I see in my browser...no thank you, I like it just the way it is, as it is supposed to be.

Actually, it doesn't force lit to display at 80 char. Lit forces it to display at 80 char. There is a difference.
 
Zeb_Carter said:
The best there is Chrome and it has served me well. A lot better than IE and Firefox. As for apps to modify what I see in my browser...no thank you, I like it just the way it is, as it is supposed to be.
Click to expand...

You've got things the way you like - I'm happy for you.

But my point was that many people (including quite a few who use Chrome) do customise their browsing to tweak fonts, sizes, colours, and backgrounds, and that authors who want to do fancy formatting may want to consider how that interacts with viewer customisation.

If the whole point of your response is that you personally don't use your browser's customisation options, I guess that's relevant to authors whose target audience is "Zeb Carter", but otherwise it just doesn't seem like it makes much difference. There are still many other readers who do.

Actually, it doesn't force lit to display at 80 char. Lit forces it to display at 80 char. There is a difference.
Click to expand...

This seemed weird to me - why would it wrap to a fixed width on two browsers but a fixed character count on a third? So I installed Chrome and tried it out, and... I have no idea what you're talking about. Lit does not "force it to display at 80 char". When I adjust the font size, it handles it gracefully - just like the other browsers - by wrapping to a fixed column width: larger font = fewer character per line. (Screenshots attached - for the largest font it works out at about 50 char/line.) Still no left-right scrolling required.

Where are you getting this "forces to display at 80 char" from?
 

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