Image Credit DJ Struntz. Surfers in the surf film "Strange Rumblings in Shangri La," walk past small icebergs on the coast of Iceland.
I am a visual person so I really like how simple the image diary makes of the work of adding an image to my diary. I never used it in DK4, and it is clearly easier then uploading to Photobucket, copying the link, pasting and editing. I will be using the library a lot going forward.
I was curious about posting an animated gif. Works fine.
Ice sheet darkness, known as albedo, estimates. Red indicates darker ice. Credit:Polar Portal
Everything was going fine, image, title, header, etc., until there was a need to edit. In Dk4 there is the “Edit Diary” button.I looked for the button and could not find it. I looked for something similar that would allow me to edit, but again I could not find a "edit button" After a few minutes of making myself frustrated and a very cranky user, I just started typing in the diary out of frustration and that answered the question. I love it! All the html code in the Diary preview DK4 edit system is gone. That was always a challenge for me in finding a sentence break or a missing space, as well as being incredibly time consuming. If I made the slightest error the text and links might go away or wrap in a way that I never intended . I will test this ability to easily edit once I publish in DK5, because I am a user that makes frequent spelling and grammar errors. I occasionally need to edit after I publish. I am happy to see that my spelling errors are caught as I type.
I appreciate having the bullet point option, it will be great to be able to highlight findings from a lot of scientific journals which are usually in pdf format. For example, this Physics of Surfing pdf. I tried to open the link after inserting, but it would not open. I suspect that is because the diary has not been published?
Using Embed link with a url will insert the web page address instead of your link. I clearly will not use this in a diary for links to a news source. See below.
Some of the Emerging Surf Spots Per www.theguardian.com/... •Hainan Island, China •Ghana •Niijimi, Japan •La Paloma, Uraguay
vs.
Insert Link
Some of the Emerging Surf Spots Per The Guardian •Hainan Island, China •Ghana •Niijimi, Japan •La Paloma, Uraguay
As you can see in the top example the url really takes away from the flow of the diary. I use a lot of links in most diaries to support any claims that I or others make. Going forward with DK5 it is important to remember to use insert link in the tool menu.
This below block quote is from one of my DK4 dairies and is a copy and paste to DK5. Yucky format!
The below clip is from the movie Strange Rumblings in Shangri La. The movie won best picture of 2014 at the Surfer Poll awards. This is the Iceland feature of the movie.In an interview with www.pastemagazine.com/... Magazine, Director www.grindtv.com/... G reflects on the challenges and rewards of filming surfers in Iceland. The movie highlights some of the more remote and challenging breaks in the world.
The above clip and block quote is copied from DK4. When I attempted to copy and paste the “embed code” from You Tube to DK5 “embed link" I get the following error message.
1 non-white listed iframe have been removed from your diary.
Element removed
What corrects that error, I found, is using the actual link, and not the embed code from You Tube. The bolded “Element removed” Is what appears once you close the error message. It can easily be deleted.
The embed link works for Vimeo as well.
Pipeline Winter 2013 from Eric Sterman on Vimeo.
It is easy to embed from MSNBC using DK5 though it does not work the same as for You Tube or Vimeo. I found that I needed to copy the MSNBC embed code and paste to embed link as the actual link that MSNBC provided did not work for me. You will have to trust me on this as I can't get the MSNBC video to post in DK4.
I wish there was a spell check on tags. But can’t have everything I suppose.
The poll came out fine. I would like the click yes or no buttons to show in a preview. I suppose it will once published.
What I like. •The additions to the tool menu. •The image Library eliminating the need to use Photobucket. •All of the noise and html in the edit section of DK4 is gone
What I don’t like. •Not being able to test links. •No spell check or edit capability for Tags. •The poll view. Does anyone know if the poll can be edited after posting? I rarely use the poll function, but I am curious.
Overall, I like the changes. It will take some practice/experience before I feel completely comfortable, but I do clerical work for a living and I won’t have a problem with using it. Anyone, who uses MS Office or similar software will not have any major issues with DK5.
P.S. The videos are cool if you got the time. :)