M* Vanguard Diehards Tools
Hopefully helpful JavaScript Tools for Using the
Morningstar Vanguard Diehards Discussion Board.
©2007, Grandpa (Bob) Beeman
Send me an EMAIL

Updated
Read More www.bee-man.us Important Notice

These tools are intended to be used with the financial discussion boards that Morningstar has so kindly provided for discussing various financial issues.

Please respect Morningstar's generosity in providing these discussion boards by following their rules at all times.


Items on this page

Links to Interesting Places
Generating a Link to a Web Page
Generating a Link to a Diehards Conversation Number
Posting Legible Tables


Links to Interesting Places


Generating a Link to a Web Page

Enter the address of the web page in the first box (without the "http://"), the title for the link in the second box and press the button. The link appears in the third box. Paste this into any html document, including a Diehards post.

Page Address:
Link Name:


Generating a Link to a Diehards Conversation Number

Replace the sample info with the info you want, then push the button to make the link.
Copy the link text and paste it in its entirety on any html page, including a Diehards post.
  Conversation #.
  Link Name
 
  Your Link

Posting Legible Tables in a Morningstar Post

If you try to make legible tables in a Morningstar post, you will find that the columns don't line up and your table formatting is destroyed, resulting in an extremely messy and nearly illegible table. This happens because html generally only allows a single space, and ignores multiple spaces.

To make legible tables, use this form and copy the output into your post.
You must copy it exactly! Instructions are below.

IMPORTANT:
Use this only for the table part of your post.
Replacing spaces greatly expands the size of this portion of your post.
There is a limit to the size of any post, so don't misuse this.

  Your Table Name (optional)
  Your Text Table

You should probably save this using a word or text processor on your computer if you will need it again. It may be lost if you refresh this page and will absolutely be lost if you close this tab or window.

 
  Your Table
for Posting

Be sure to copy ALL of it!!
Use the scroll bars if necessary. Or click in this field, then do a "Select All" followed by a "Copy" in the "Edit" menu.

</tt>

Instructions:

In normal html pages, you use <table> tags to format tables. But Morningstar deletes table tags in your posts, for reasons known only to them.

The alternative is to do the following:

  1. Put "<tt>" tags before your table and </tt>" tags after.
    This guarantees that the table is represented in a fixed-pitch (TeleType) font such as Courier.

  2. Replace multiple spaces in your table with "&nbsp;".
    These are html-encoded non-breaking spaces, and are not ignored by html.

This form below does this automatically. To use it, do the following:

  1. Choose a name for your table and enter it in the first field.
    This is optional, and is only useful if you have more than one table in a post and want to make sure you don't confuse them while you are entering your post.

  2. Enter your table just as you want it to look in the "Text Table" field.
    Note that for Morningstar posts the width of your part is limited to 60 characters for ordinary text and 56 characters for <tt> text. So this field limits you to 56 characters to prevent unexpected surprises when you post.

  3. Edit your table in the "Text Table" field.
    It is probably best to save a copy of this in a text editor on your computer, as this page uses JavaScript, and therefore anything you type here will be gone forever when you close this browser window or quit your browser!

  4. When you are ready, push the "Make Table" button.

  5. Copy the contents of the "Your Table for Posting" field.
    You can do this by wiping the contents of the field with the mouse, not forgetting to scroll if necessary to get all of it.
    Alternatively, you can click in the field and use the "Select All" and "Copy" commands in your browser's "Edit" menu item.

This implementation minimizes the use of "&nbsp;" by only using them if the previous character was an ASCII space(32), LF(10), or CR(13). Thus multiple spaces will have only every other one replaced rather than all of them, reducing the expansion of spaces from 6:1 to something more like 3:1. It is necessary to detect ASCII Character Values of 10 and 13, because (due to html rules) space characters (ASCII 32) immediately following these are at the beginning of a line and are ignored. Thus the "& " must be used to replace spaces there.

Interestingly, Internet Explorer ends lines with CR(13), whereas Netscape and Safari end lines with LF(10). Micro$oft is the oddball again!


Read More: "Diehards Tools"

These tools are intended to be used with the financial discussion boards that Morningstar has so kindly provided for discussing various financial issues.

Please respect Morningstar's generosity in providing these discussion boards by following their rules at all times.

This page uses JavaScript, a programming language used to make interactive web pages. The JavaScripts on this page do not communicate with my server, except to download the page of course, and will run just fine if you copy them to a file on your computer and then point your browser to that file.

All of the computational effort occurs on your computer and browser and does not involve my server in any way.

The appearance of this page may vary somewhat on various browsers and operating systems, but has been tested on Mac OSX using Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Safari. I have found in the past that this also pretty much guarantees operation on Windows and Linux.

If you find any bugs or issues please use the link at the top of the page to send me EMAIL about it. Remember, this is my hobby, not my business, and I will get to any issues when I can.

Diehards Fixed pitch (tt) max width is 56.

Diehards Normal font max width is 60.


IMPORTANT NOTICE
This page is copyrighted "freeware"
©2007, Bob Beeman
www.bee-man.us

I make NO guarantee of any kind.
This page may contain serious errors.
Use this page entirely at your own risk!
Do not use this page for any illegal purpose.

Subject to the above, you may use this page and its included software yourself, copy and redistribute it, or even put it on your own website. I ask only that you not make any changes, and that if you reuse any of the code, make sure to list me as one of your sources.

My only reward for writing this is the 15 milliseconds of fame I receive from having my name here. Don't deprive me of that.

You can copy this page so that it works when you are not connected to the net by simply doing a "Save As" in your browser. In order to do this you will have to look at the features of your browser and decide to save the page as one of the following:

Enjoy!