Your Blogger Toolbar

If there's one thing Old people struggle with, it's Internet iconography. Many of the symbols in this lesson are universal--you'll see them in text editing software, your e-mail client, and other blogging platforms. Since it's blogging month on Lessons for Old People, I've taken the toolbar in the New Post editor apart bit by bit for your convenience.

This is what the editor looks like. The toolbar is at the top, above the area where you input your clever thoughts.

These are the first two "buttons". The one on the left is your undo button. It's pretty great. I'd like one for the real world for Christmas. The one next to it is the redo button. Less exciting, but makes a great stocking stuffer, I guess.

These are your text modifiers. The fancy "F" will modify your font (your options are Arial, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Times, Trebuchet, and Verdana). The Ts next to the fancy "F" will modify the size of your text.


The not-picture "B", "I", "U", and "ABC" will also modify your text, making text bold, italics, underlined and stricken, respectively. (Journalistically, I caution you to use the strikethrough wisely. You can't strikethrough a mistake and call it a day. Blogs do this frequently and I think it's lazy.)

But wait, there's more! The giant "A" will modify the color of your text:

And the icon next to it will highlight your text:

These icons will insert media! The link button will insert a link. It looks like this when you press it:

TEXT TO DISPLAY is the text a reader will click to visit the link. The box below, TO WHAT URL SHOULD THIS GO? is the Web page your reader will visit post-click. You can highlight text and skip the TEXT TO DISPLAY step.

The picture of a mountain, next to the link icon will insert an image into your post. You can upload from your computer:

or from the Internet. The other icons insert video sor jump breaks, respectively.

More text modifiers! Here you align text, make a numbered list, make a bulleted list, indent quotes, remove formatting, and check spelling. When you align text, you align right, center, left, and justified:

Spellcheck is ridiculously helpful. When you mistype something, you'll see a red dotted line under the word in question:

Spellcheck will highlight the word:

And when you double-click the word, the tool will provide suggestions. You can click the correct word, or ignore.

That's a lot to learn. Hopefully my colloquialisms haven't stood in our way. As always, if you have questions, you can leave a comment. (And if you're my mom, you have my number.)