Do you have a Gather 'Font'asy?
Has your carefully chosen font ever automatically reverted to a somewhat boring default when publishing?
Are you also having difficulty with font sizing?
...or colors?
Occasionally, font facing and style can be used very effectively for supporting the subject, plot, setting, or tone of your article. In addition, sparing use of colored text can also be useful for emphasizing points, or clearly denoting section headings.
Adding color to article text was made easier when Gather updated the article editor a few months ago. However, obtaining a specific font facing, style or size other than the default has remained a rather elusive process....until now.
Text can be easily added to your Gather articles in a
variety of colors
sizes
and
Font Styles.
You can also include symbols or special characters, called unicodes, and have full control over their color and size, as illustrated below. You may read this article to learn more about using these special symbols on Gather.
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There are several methods for properly designating and displaying specific font faces, colors and sizes within articles. The instructions below will only address the easiest method, which is also available to the largest number of members using Windows based PCs.
| » | Internet Explorer (any version) |
| » | WordPad (preferred), or Microsoft Works word processor. Wordpad is a program which typically comes bundled with Windows. Some newer computers may also have MS Works installed. |


| » | Colors and fonts will display properly in all browsers, but Internet Explorer is required when publishing the article on Gather. |
| » | You may create the entire article in MSWord, or any word processing program of your choosing. However, one of the programs above is required, in accordance with the instructions below. |


| 1. | Create your article in MSWord, WordPad, or any program you are comfortable with. |
| 2. | Add colors, fonts and sizing to your article, using the program's font formatting tools. |
| 3. | When ready for publishing, copy the entire article and paste into WordPad, or MSWorks (if created within another program). |
| 4. | Make any final adjustments, if necessary. |
| 5. | Open the article editor on Gather using Internet Explorer (IE). |
| 6. | Copy your article from Wordpad, and paste into the Gather editor. NOTE: Your pasted text may APPEAR to lose all formatting. However, your article will publish with colors, fonts and sizes intact. |
| 7. | Edit, or change your article as required. |
| 8. | Publish. |
| 9. | If necessary, you may edit your article after publishing using FireFox or any other browser. Internet Explorer is only required when originally pasting article text from outside of Gather. |




Comments: 28
Thank you for all you do, Kevin! This is brilliant!
I like the text boxes you made in this article- how do you do those?
Also - would you happen to know why my pictures tend to go missing from an article after a while? My previously published soundtrackings seem to be losing their pictures within about a week or so of when I put them up. I'm confused by this.
I will send you a mail message on your questions above. :-)
someday maybe they will be able to fix that even more...
KEven,
I too would like to know how to do the text box's like you did above. That would help enormously with instructional articles.
Thank you Sir,
I will send you a mail message regarding the problem you are experiencing. Although, you have allowed me to identify an oversight in my directions that I will need to correct. When pasting into the Gather article editor, you must NOT use the 'Paste from Word' button on the toolbar. Otherwise, it should work every time (unless you have chosen a very obscure font).
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Your instructions are clear and easy to follow. Thank you for all that you do to help the Gather Community!
But... I am still curious. In your step 6, when you paste it into the Gather composer box, do you use Control+V or use one of the two paste icons (one is T and the other is W)?
That is a good point. In my original article (this is an update) I stated that you had to paste the text and NOT use the 'Paste from Word' (W) function. However, in this newer version I dropped that verbiage. I believe I did this because it didn't make a difference...however I can't seem to recall now. I will need to test this again, and make adjustments in my instructions, if necessary.
This is probably a good idea anyway, as Gather will make changes occasionally which impact my documentation.
Thanks for asking!
What about us FireFox users? We need the same help. Otherwise Gather should let us know when we arrive that IE is the preferred Browser. If that were the case, I wouldn't be here.
pj