update 2014 - the article below shows the old toolbar - notice the button shown here to see the new way to get to see the HTML view of your document
previous post below ==============
The recent update for ActiveRain now allows you easier access to the HTML view on your blog posts. There used to be two tabs WYSIWYG and HTML to switch back and forth. BUT before you clicked on a tab, you had to save the post (to Draft) and then go back into the edit mode and then pick the tab to change views. That was a lot of extra steps!
Now we have an HTML button that will pop up the HTML view. You can make your edit and then close the pop up view to see the immediate change.
Now the question,
why would you want to go to HTML?
There are certain types of things that you can embed in your blog posts where you get the source code from other sites. Two of my favorite things to embed are YouTube videos and Google Maps. Once you get the source HTML code from these sites copied onto your clipboard, you come back to AR and post it (in the new HTML view).
HTML code can be a little intimidating when you don't know how to read it (it really isn't so bad once you understand). Don't sweat it, you DON'T HAVE TO LEARN HTML to use it. You have your snippet of code waiting on your clipboard, you just need to give yourself a bit of placeholder text to know where to insert it. I like the phrases "MAP HERE" or "VIDEO HERE" (tip: caps helps it to stand out). Put this text in your blog post in the normal view. When you switch to HTML view, just look for the placeholder text and simply highlight the text and then paste the HTML code to overwrite the placeholder text. That's it. Close the HTML view and check out your results.
Thank you ActiveRain for implementing new updates to make our blogging easier!
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