How to make Tables

[blaird]

Tables are not necessary for your AAR's. But I have had people ask me how to make them, as they are done in BBCode and people would like to use them in their posts.

Step 1.
Click on the table icon and set the parameters of the table.

For the Parameters, I use:
11 Rows, and 8 Columns.

For the claims it depends on how you want to report them. But one row/column per fighter type, and one row/column per fighter dedicated to the number claimed.

Step 2.
Editing your table

For editing the table, I find it is easier to click on the preview button on the bottom of the text box, this way you can edit directly in the table instead of inside the html.


Video:


One of the things about the forum, is that I don't lock the previous mission until the end of the current one, so you don't have to create a new table for each mission, simply go back, to your last post, hit edit and copy the tables.  then paste the tables into the new posts.

[tomt1999]

Hey on your video, your HTML code is all nice and formatted. When I look at HTML (or rather BBCode), it looks like this:

Row 1 column 1	Row 1 column 2	Row 1 column 3	Row 1 column 4	Row 1 column 5	Row 1 column 6	Row 1 column 7	Row 1 column 8	Row 1 column 9	Row 1 column 10	Row 1 column 11
Row 2 column 1	Row 2 column 2	Row 2 column 3	Row 2 column 4	Row 2 column 5	Row 2 column 6	Row 2 column 7	Row 2 column 8	Row 2 column 9	Row 2 column 10	Row 2 column 11
Row 3 column 1	Row 3 column 2	Row 3 column 3	Row 3 column 4	Row 3 column 5	Row 3 column 6	Row 3 column 7	Row 3 column 8	Row 3 column 9	Row 3 column 10	Row 3 column 11

How did you pretty yours up?

Thanks,

TomT

[ChefEd]

Aug 13, 2023 15:28:23 GMT -8 tomt1999 said:

Hey on your video, your HTML code is all nice and formatted. When I look at HTML (or rather BBCode), it looks like this:

Row 1 column 1	Row 1 column 2	Row 1 column 3	Row 1 column 4	Row 1 column 5	Row 1 column 6	Row 1 column 7	Row 1 column 8	Row 1 column 9	Row 1 column 10	Row 1 column 11
Row 2 column 1	Row 2 column 2	Row 2 column 3	Row 2 column 4	Row 2 column 5	Row 2 column 6	Row 2 column 7	Row 2 column 8	Row 2 column 9	Row 2 column 10	Row 2 column 11
Row 3 column 1	Row 3 column 2	Row 3 column 3	Row 3 column 4	Row 3 column 5	Row 3 column 6	Row 3 column 7	Row 3 column 8	Row 3 column 9	Row 3 column 10	Row 3 column 11

How did you pretty yours up?

Thanks,

TomT

Hi TomT,

A few things.
One, here is a pretty good reference for working with BBCode: bbcode.org
Two, have you clicked on the BBCode tab at the bottom of the editing screen? There you can directly edit the code.
Three, not all BBCode is implemented the same, so some tags may or may not work in this forum, as you might expect them to.
Four, take some time to experiment to see which codes work, and how the perform here. I have found that some tags will be ignored, even completely deleted by this platform.

Cheers

[limburger59]

Aug 13, 2023 17:54:32 GMT -8 ChefEd said:

Aug 13, 2023 15:28:23 GMT -8 tomt1999 said:

Hey on your video, your HTML code is all nice and formatted. When I look at HTML (or rather BBCode), it looks like this:

Row 1 column 1	Row 1 column 2	Row 1 column 3	Row 1 column 4	Row 1 column 5	Row 1 column 6	Row 1 column 7	Row 1 column 8	Row 1 column 9	Row 1 column 10	Row 1 column 11
Row 2 column 1	Row 2 column 2	Row 2 column 3	Row 2 column 4	Row 2 column 5	Row 2 column 6	Row 2 column 7	Row 2 column 8	Row 2 column 9	Row 2 column 10	Row 2 column 11
Row 3 column 1	Row 3 column 2	Row 3 column 3	Row 3 column 4	Row 3 column 5	Row 3 column 6	Row 3 column 7	Row 3 column 8	Row 3 column 9	Row 3 column 10	Row 3 column 11

How did you pretty yours up?

Thanks,

TomT

Hi TomT,

A few things.
One, here is a pretty good reference for working with BBCode: bbcode.org
Two, have you clicked on the BBCode tab at the bottom of the editing screen? There you can directly edit the code.
Three, not all BBCode is implemented the same, so some tags may or may not work in this forum, as you might expect them to.
Four, take some time to experiment to see which codes work, and how the perform here. I have found that some tags will be ignored, even completely deleted by this platform.

Cheers

Great advice from Ed.

I will add:
#1 Save
Then, if you add/try something under the BBCode tab, immediately go back to the Preview tab to confirm it worked the way you wanted. If it did, then Save. If not, back out, go back to your saved page, click Edit, and try again.
I’ve had to adjust the width of the page on my computer in order to read the table in BBCode so I could be sure that I was inserting something like a background color in the right spot.

[tomt1999]

So I guess what my question is, is that when I flip back and forth from BBCode to Preview, I lose any formatting of the code that I did, for example,

<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> Sample </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

turns into

Sample

As an oldtime coder, I like my code nice and neat but this seems to reset it each time. Maybe I'll try a different browser.

Thanks,
TomT

[ChefEd]

Aug 15, 2023 8:46:30 GMT -8 tomt1999 said:

So I guess what my question is, is that when I flip back and forth from BBCode to Preview, I lose any formatting of the code that I did, for example,

<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> Sample </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

turns into

Sample

As an oldtime coder, I like my code nice and neat but this seems to reset it each time. Maybe I'll try a different browser.

Thanks,
TomT

I hear you, me too. Unfortunately, this platform strips all code formatting.

I finalize my code in Word, then paste into the forum for testing. Make modifications in Word, then repeat until it works. That way I will have a structure to leverage later.

FYI, in case you didn't notice, this code gets cumbersome. The code engine here assigns cell formatting to each cell, rather than to the Table or Row tags. For example, adding cell borders, etc. needs to be done for each individual cell. Argh.

[crushedhat]

Sounds to me like tables are more bother than they're worth. I'll skip them for now. Could the 'embed' icon (</>) above be used to insert an excel sheet?

[tomt1999]

Here's how to embed a Google document:

support.proboards.com/thread/651951/use-google-drive-embed

It seems that Excel files are not supported as embedded objects from what I can tell.

Here is an AAR Google Sheets file I'm working up to use here:

TomT

80 BS

[tomt1999]

After a ton of tinkering around, I came up with a process to make better tables than BBCode offers (if you have some coding experience).

To insert a table in BBCode:

1. Place a table in your message using the table button in the toolbar.

2. Paste its code in an HTML edito - I use BBedit.
3. Clean it up (make it look like regular HTML. Some editors do this automatically).
4. Replace all [] with <> - BBCode uses brackets ([ ]) instead of <>.
5. Insert your code into the table HTML.
6. Test it in your editor software. I save it as a web page on my machine and look at it with a browser. Some editors have a built-in HTML preview function.
7. If it looks good, remove all line feeds with the table HTML structure - from <table> to </table> - make it all one long line.

8. Convert the <> back to [].

9. Copy and Paste into BBCode window on Forum message web page.
10.Test it out - remember to make changes in your editor and then paste in Forum.

Cumbersome? You bet! I don't know if I'm going to do this or not. Maybe some automation and/or use of templates would make it easier.

Here's a sample. I used colors for the header cells as well as the Row 2 borders:

POSITION	RANK / NAME	CUR MISS #	CLAIMS	STRESS	STATUS
Row 2 column 1	Row 2 column 2	Row 2 column 3	Row 2 column 4	Row 2 column 5	Row 2 column 6