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[VIDEO] Macros Save You Time with Frequently-Used Text and Images

Torley Linden

Entry posted by Torley Linden

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Friendly greetings!

I'm delighted to see you, now that community.secondlife.com is live for your vibrant participation. (The old blogs.secondlife.com addy still works, and redirects.)

If you're new to this site or even Second Life, check out "Welcome to the New Second Life Community Platform", and remember that Community Help is accessible from many pages.

A bit about myself: I'm Torley Linden, and have loved being an intense part of Second Life since 2004. I believe that creative expression through your avatar is a self-empowering and healing benefit. Here's who I am today, yes I'm meditating:

5492234878_3af1ebdb9e_o.jpeg

Ever since I started, I've had a passion for learning useful + fun facts and sharing them broadly so Residents of all experience levels can benefit: I observe that many "power user" tips are only perceived that way because they're obscure and not well-understood, and by making knowledge more accessible, you'll have a better experience. After all, how many times do you find yourself going: "I wish I knew that earlier!" That's one of the most popular things I hear. So I found myself constantly promoting these tips & tricks — hence YOU ARE HERE! :)

It's been wonderful seeing you "early adopters" jump onboard community.secondlife.com and not only play with a variety of things, but also ask questions. For starters, if you've been perusing the My Settings area (there are a lot more options than the previous community platform), you may have wondered:

What are macros?

Simply put, macros let you easily copy-and-paste frequently-used blocks of text. It could be a catchphrase, a collection of useful links you often refer to... think of what you need most. So without further ado, here's a video to prepare you on how to use macros:

Another thing I should call out... if you want to make richly-formatted macros but aren't comfortable with HTML coding:

  1. Enter the macro you want to see in a Rich Text field. (You can easily get to one by starting a question in Answers, but remember not to submit it through if you're just testing!)
  2. Click the HTML tab to see the code.
  3. Copy that code into the macro field on the Macros page.
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the Macros page and click Save Changes.

I have a video that shows you exactly how to do this, too:

But remember: styling should support effective communication, not distract from it.

Related

And since we're still ultra-new-and-shiny, we've been hot out of the gate fixing various bugs. I'm aware we could use some more breathing space between headers, and bulleted/numbered lists aren't indented correctly. A gracious thank-you to those of you who helped me reproduce some of those bugs yesterday: quick fixes for image uploads, weirdly-spaced emoticons and more have already been done by our Community Platform gurus. Feel free to share your future findings in the Community Feedback forums!

Is there an aspect of community.secondlife.com you're curious about? Chat with me in the comments!

 

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Darrius Gothly

 

Torley Linden wrote:

Is there an aspect of community.secondlife.com you're curious about? Chat with me in the comments!

 

 

Yes, most definitely. A complete table of places where images may be uploaded and the expected/allowed/maximum/minimum sizes would be wonderful.

Also information on how to remove the "artifacts" that are left over on an Avatar Badge when using one of the provided Badge images. When uploading one of our own making, there is a middle layer left behind that is not accessible to us.

TIA

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Void Singer

for scripters and those who post code, here are a few helper macros that you may copy.....

this prevents line wraps (enabling the scroll bar on the box) and makes the default text black for better visibility when posting code:

<pre><span style="white-space: pre;color: #000000;"> SCRIPT</span></pre>

the folowing are simple higlight colors for LSL....

llFunctions and "default" and "state" commands:

<span style="color: #7F0026;font-weight: bold;"> FUNCTION</span>

"event_names" and "NAMED_CONSTANTS":

<span style="color: #004C7F;font-weight: bold;"> WHAT</span>

"types" and ""Quoted strings."":

<span style="color: #194C19;font-weight: bold;"> CAST</span>

"Flow control" commands (if, else, do, while, for, @, jump, return):

<span style="color: #0000CC;font-weight: bold;"> FLOW</span>

"//-- Comments":

<span style="color: #CC4C26;">//-- Comment</span>

all of them allow you to double click the interior part and double backspace, then either paste or type (the extra leading space prevents the color formatting from being wiped out by double click selection)

 

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  • Lindens
Torley Linden
  • Lindens

@Darrius Excellent points.

(1) I notice you asked earlier where the official help is for using this system. Look for Community Help in the top-right of many pages. For your specific curiosity, see the Images section: right now, you can only upload images to your personal gallery here. For security reasons, we don't allow linking to images already on the web (like Flickr).

(2) I've run into that and it definitely looks like a bug. I'll report it.

@Jack42 Cheers mate!

@Void I've been glad seeing this in early use. Thank you for sharing!

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