"How did you do that?" The Comic Vine toolbar explained, Part 1

This allows you to determine the use of your text. If you hover the mouse over "Paragraph," you'll get a dropdown menu with "Paragraph, Header 4, Header 3, and Header 2," each "Header" showing a different size. This is how they look when you use them:

Paragraph is regular text. This is what you want to use most of the time.

Header 4 looks like this.

.

Header 3 looks like this.

.

Header 2 looks like this.

The Headers actually serve a purpose which I don't fully understand- there used to be a blog somewhere onsite explaining them. It's probably still there, but I couldn't tell you where to find it now. Basically though, what I got from the video when I viewed it in 2010 was that Headers have something to do with how everything is found by search engines. The video also asked us all to use them sparingly, but from what I've seen, no one has done that.

Besides using Header 2 as a banner over a section of type, all three types of Headers have a unique function. If you're in a jumbled up space of text and pictures, using a Header will force your text below the jumble, because a Header is going to use a full line of your blog space. For an example, see above where I said "Here's a closeup:," and the line "Here's the same closeup..." Those are both displayed in Header 4, so I could display the next picture without cluttering things.

August 11, 2018 Update: Recent changes to Comic Vine have made Header 3 & Header 4 look the same size, and to me, Header 2 looks smaller than usual. In "edit" mode, they look their normal sizes, but once saved, the changed sizes are there. I don't know if this is permanent or not, but there doesn't appear to be anything you can do about it.

Bullet points are what I'm using to make this list. It marks each item in the list with a black dot to the left. That black dot is called a "bullet." There's two ways to do the Bullet points: 1) You can click the Bullet points button, and start making your list. Or 2) You can make your list first, highlight all the text with your cursor, and then click the Bullet Points button.

Something about Bullet Points: Let's say I make a list:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four

For whatever reason, I decide I don't want "Three" in a bullet. I can put the cursor by Three, click the Bullet Points button again, and my list will now look like this:

• One
• Two

Three

• Four

With the cursor by Three, I can click the Bullet points button again, and it will be back in the bulleted list.

A numbered list is basically the same as a Bullet points list, except instead of bullets to the left of each point, you get numbers instead:

1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five

Same as with Bullet points, if you decide you don't want something in your numbered list, you can do a few things: 1) highlight it with your mouse, and hit delete. You may have to hit delete again to close up your numbering. 2) If you still want the item there, just not with a number, you can put your cursor next to the item you want to take out, and click the Numbered list button again, and it will be out. Let's say "Three" again:

1. One
2. Two

Three

1. Four
2. Five

3) Maybe you want one item on the list to have a Bullet point instead of a number. Same thing- put the cursor next to the item, and click the Bullet points button. Let's say "Two" this time:

1. One

• Two

1. Three
2. Four
3. Five

Now in both of those examples, you'll notice that the numbering changed for the second part of the Numbered list. That's automatic, and there's nothing you can do about it. So, you use this if you want to make two separate Numbered lists, or you use a Bullet points list, and type the numbers in yourself.

Let's say you have four lines of text, and want the middle two indented to the right. You highlight those two lines with your mouse, then click the Indent right button, and it will look like this:

Now, when I just did that, it moved the fourth line to the right also, which I did not want it to do. So I put the cursor by "Four lines of text," clicked the Indent left button, and it moved back to the left. So there's another use for your Indent left button.

If you're in the forums, and you want to reply to what User A said on page 1, but your response is going to be on page 5, you can hover your mouse in the bottom left hand corner of User A's comment, click "Quote," and their comment will appear in your comment box like this:

I think Batman could take Galactus with sufficient prep time. <--Quoted comment

Heck yeah he could! He's Batman! <--Your response

*******

And then you can type your response in normal text as seen above. You might find any number of uses for the Quote function, but let's talk about Comic Vine PM's. Let's say you're in a group PM with five users. You want to respond to User A's comment on page 1 of the PM, but your response is going to show up on page 3 of the PM. The problem is: you don't have that "Quote" button in each box of the PM, like you do on the forums. So what do you do?

You use your mouse to highlight the comment or piece of a comment that you want to respond to. You copy it. You go to your comment box, and you paste it. Then you put the cursor next to this snippet of text, click the "Quote" button on the toolbar, and it will make it into quoted text:

Thanks for responding to me in PM so we didn't derail the thread. What do you mean though? I said, "I think Batman could take Galactus with sufficient prep time." User F agreed with me. How can you not agree with me? <--The quoted portion of the PM

Dude, I agreed with you so you wouldn't feel so completely alone when everyone started attacking you. He's Galactus, bro. He eats worlds. Unless he has an Ultimate Nullifier in his utility belt, he's going to die with the planet. <--Your response

*******

Quote is a pretty handy little tool. You can use it for more than responding to other users. Let's say you're writing a blog or story on fear, and you want to quote FDR's famous line:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Now, you get a secondary tool bar when you Quote something on CV:

That little black tool bar above the quote that starts with "size?" You'll see this whenever you use Quote, Img, Video, Table, Spoiler Block, List, and something a little bit similar when you use Link and Tweet. Unique to the Quote tool bar though is the "Credit" button, seen under the red arrow in the picture.

This is for crediting the person, website, book, etc. that you are quoting. By hitting the Credit button, it will create a space to the bottom right of the quote for you to type in the person's name. So now your quote will look like this:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

That Italics on the credited name is an automatic thing, and there's nothing you can do about it.

The rest of the black toolbar:

• size, followed by S, M, L. - Honestly, I've never played with these on a quote. It might be obvious, but I don't want to assume, so: S = Small, M = Medium, and L = Large. Here's how it looks:

Small:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Medium:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Large:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

• position, followed by L, C, R, U, D. - No, it's not el crud. It's L = Left, C = Center, R = Right, U = Up, and D = Down. "Center" is how you're seeing the quotes above- centered on the page. "Up" and "Down" lets you move the quote up and down the page without retyping it. "Left" and "Right" look like this:

Left: <--(Header 4, to keep the quote from cluttering up with the text above)

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Right: <--(Header 4, to keep the Right quote from cluttering with the Left quote)

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The thin, light gray line beside the quote is to separate the quote from your normal text, and it's an automatic thing. You cannot do anything about it. But that's a good thing, because you don't want readers getting confused on what is your regular text, and what is the quoted text anyway. Right? Right. And as you can see, the text will automatically wrap around the quote until it is clear and can again use the whole line. Also, you can see in the Right quote that you can still credit the person you're quoting. That's true in whatever position you put your quote. So let's move on.

This is the button that allows you to create working links. Let's say I want to link you to my story New Teen Titans: Always Running (rated E for Everyone). I can right click the link, go to "copy link address," left click, come back to this page, and past the link:

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/cbishop/blog/new-teen-titans-always-running/129925/

You can highlight the above link with your mouse, and at least on Chrome, you can right click, find an option that says "Go to [link address]," left click, and a new window opens up with the story. That's a whole lot of extra steps though, so on CV, what you can do is paste the link same as above. Then you highlight it, click the Link button in the toolbar, and you'll get this:

Usually, this box will come up on whatever option you used last. I tend to use "To a URL" more than "To Comic Vine Content," but we'll do both.

In the picture, you can see the link address in both the first and second white fields. The first white field is the text that you highlighted. The second white field is for putting in your link address. You paste in the address, click the green "Create Link" button on the bottom right, and boom, you have your link.

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/cbishop/blog/new-teen-titans-always-running/129925/

That link is long and looks kind of ugly though, so maybe you want something cleaner. I could just tell the readers, "Read my story here." I would highlight the word "here," click the Link button, and get this:

As you can see, the first field says "here;" the word I highlighted. The second field is where I pasted in the link address (also known as URL). And voila, I have my link:

Read my story here.

Maybe that's too generic though, and you want to show the readers the title as a link. Same as with "here," I can tell the readers, "Read my story, New Teen Titans: Always Running." I highlight "New Teen Titans: Always Running," click the link button, paste the URL, and get this:

Read my story, New Teen Titans: Always Running.

That looks a lot better, right?

*******

Now, what if you're back in that Batman vs. Galactus debate, and you want to make sure that everyone reading knows who you're talking about? This is when you use the "To Comic Vine Content" option. So once again, you say:

I think Batman could take Galactus with sufficient prep time.

First, you highlight "Batman," click the Link button, and choose "To Comic Vine Content" if it's not already there. It will appear like this:

Click in the second field next to "Batman," and you'll get something that looks like this:

As you can see, "Batman" the Character is third on the list. See that "All" button next to "Batman" in the second field? By clicking on that, you can narrow down the search to "Characters," "Volume," etc. You want "Characters," so you get this:

You do the same process for creating the Galactus link, and your statement now looks like this:

I think Batman could take Galactus with sufficient prep time.

Now every reader can understand what you're talking about, regardless of their level of comic knowledge, because you have given them links to the information that they need.