"Guided Mode" for Simple Formatting

[Helene]

If you select the " Reply" button from a post (which quotes the post in the reply), or the Reply button from the bottom of a thread, you're in "Full Reply" mode, where you'll see a list of formatting buttons above and smilies to the left of the reply input box, where you type your post.

Directly above the smilies are two choices:

* Guided Mode

* Normal Mode.

If you want a simple way to bold, italicize, underline, Enter a link to a web page, enter an email address (a@b.com), OR

Add a quote

you can select Guided Mode.

When you click one of the formatting option buttons, a box will open up prompting you for text to bold, italicize, underline, turn into email text, or quote. Once you click the "OK" button, the system will add the formatting tags and add the text to your reply.

For links to web pages, the first prompt is for the URL, and the second is for the text you want to display. This works the same way as if you had pressed the button.

If you have a long quote, depending on your operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac) and your browser, your copy function may paste only up to the first carriage return/enter into your post, although I was able to use "Select All" to Leigh Witchel's entire Bolshoi review page from DanceViewTimes into a quote.

If you decide to add (more) formatting to text that already appears, switch back to Normal mode.

I don't see a setting to make this the default selection, but if I find one, I'll post it.