Echo: Quick Start Guide

Contents:

• How do I add my Gravatar?
• How do I add my homepage to my profile?
• How do I make hyperlinks in Echo comments?
• What are the big "gotcha"s in going from Haloscan to Echo, as a user?
• Should I use the "Reply" link below someone's comment?
• The typeface is TOO SMALL!!!!
• Page 2?!? This SUX!!!
• JavaScript timeout issues
• Child/parent comments: What if I delete the parent?

How do I add my Gravatar?

Scroll all the way to the bottom of any Echo comments page, and click on the gray silhouette icon to the left of the comments form. You should see something like this:

You can choose among any of the listed methods to authenticate to Echo. Click the radio button of one of the selections -- unless a pop-up window appears asking your permission to login to a service, you will then need to click in the middle of that line to produce a form field for you to take further action (browse for a photo, enter an e-mail address, etc.). Once you select a method (other than "No avatar" or "My computer"; we'll cover those, later) you'll be asked to login into the service you've selected. Do that, and whatever avatar you have associated with that service will show up for you in Echo.

If you select "No avatar," then you will continue to see the default gray silhoutte icon next to your posts. If you select "My computer," you'll have to click that line, and use the resulting "Browse..." button to navigate to an image on your computer you want to use.

More thoughts on the authentication features, here.

How do I add my homepage to my profile?

Scroll all the way to the bottom of any Echo comments page, and click on the "Add another site" link, below your name in the comments form. You should see something like this:

You can choose as many of these items as you like/have accounts for (if you have no cookies on your computer suggesting that you have an account at some of these services, they will be "grayed out," and unavailable to you). Anything you check here will show up as a link whenever someone hovers over your avatar, so if you have a Blogger blog, the "Blogger" link that shows up will point to your default Blogger blog. If you have a blog on another platform, or just want to post a link elsewhere, click on "My site" at the bottom of this list, and type/paste your URL here. You can add several, so experiment if you want -- you can also delete or deactivate some of these links (uncheck the box = deactivate; click the "X" on the right of the list, if available, to delete the link as an option, altogether).

How do I make hyperlinks in Echo comments?

As of 12/30/09, A-man has removed the text formatting buttons from Echo, so you'll just have to manually type out the HTML code, just as you did in Haloscan.

Type the words you want to make into a link, highlight the word(s) you want to make into a hyperlink, and click the link button (indicated below):

Crude language aside... you probably get the point. :) A pop-up box appears, and you type or paste your fully-formed URL (including http:// at the beginning!) into the field provided. Click the "Insert" button, and continue making your comment, and post when ready. Voila!

What are the big "gotcha"s in going from Haloscan to Echo, as a user?

• The list of comments DOES NOT REFRESH after you post. You'll have to use F5, right-click-reload, COMMAND-click-reload/refresh (Mac) COMMAND+R (Mac) or CTRL+R (PC) after posting, and indeed, any time you want to see updated posts (there is no yellow bar to let you know others have posted). If you use Internet Explorer, you will be annoyed, as IE users report that reloading the comments always takes you to the top of the comments. Consider switching to another browser.

• Links DO NOT open in a new tab or window. Use the "right-click/open in..." function of your browser (Mac users, use COMMAND-click to get the context menu for the browser).

• You can't put HTML code into the comments, directly. To make hyperlinks, see above. To do text formatting, highlight the text you want to format, and use the comments form's buttons (or on PC, CTRL+B = bold, CTRL+I = italics, CTRL+U = underline; Mac is probably similar, but use COMMAND key instead of CTRL). Big plus: NO MORE BOLDIES! OR SLANTIES! ;)

• There's no preview in Echo. However, as long as you don't mess with your authentication method (see the first answer, above), you have the ability to delete your own comments in Echo! So, if you make a typo, you can copy the comment you just made, delete it, and paste it back into the editor (formatting preserved, including links!), fix the typo, and re-post it. You're so perfect. :)

• Don't get too attached to Echo. A-man could decide to switch platforms, should unforeseen issues arise with Echo. In fact, I kinda hope he gives dirk gently's commenting system (reportedly available in January, 2010) a look. dirk's bensonmum was a brilliant and useful addition to Haloscan, and I think his commenting system will have all the features we liked about Haloscan, and then some (like bensonmum functionality!).

Should I use the "Reply" link below someone's comment?

It depends. If it's a short, one-off comment directly to that person, it probably won't hurt. If you don't do it within a minute or two of their comment, though, they may never see it, as this causes your reply to "nest" below their "parent" comment as a "child" comment, and depending on how many new comments are coming it, it won't take long for that parent/child comment set to be "above the fold" on the screen. The reason I put this guide together was because people were asking these questions dozens of times in the same comments thread, consistently, in the first 24 hours. If people won't read through the middle of the thread to get the answer to a burning, "I'm-lost-and-don't-know-what-to-do!" question that was answered a dozen times already, do you think they're going to go hunting these nested replies? :) I don't. So, use accordingly.

The typeface is TOO SMALL!!!!

CTRL + (PC) or COMMAND + (Mac) works in most browsers to increase the font size.

Page 2?!? This SUX!!!

As of 12/29/09, A-man has set the page-wrap feature to 600 comments -- that is, all the comments stay on one page until the 601st comment is submitted to a thread. If you refresh this 601+ comment thread from Page 2, you will always go back to Page 1, and this is annoying, and sucks, completely.

As a workaround, I propose using the "Reply" link on the first comment of Page 1, which will push older comments onto Page 2, and allow the party to continue near the top of Page 1. Yes, this means you will be "nesting" comments, which I generally think is a bad idea. However, it will keep the "action" going on near the top of the page that comes up when people refresh the thread, so it should in theory work pretty well. How this will affect post-refresh positioning is uncertain, as it has not yet been tested.

JavaScript timeout issues

If you receive this message in Firefox:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

... your computer may not have the resources to run Echo without some tweaking. Try this: In Firefox, the script timeout is settable, as follows:

1) In the "location" bar, type "about:config", and then hit Enter.
2) Click the "I'll be careful" button
3) In the Filter bar, type "script_run"
--> You will see "dom.max_chrome_script_run_time" and "dom.max_script_run_time"
4) Double-click "dom.max_script_run_time" and enter "50" in the box and click OK. This sets the JavaScript timeout to 50 seconds, to give slower computers time to run the JavaScript Echo code.
5) Close all Firefox windows and restart Firefox. The timeout messages should go away, going forward.

Thanks to batguano for this tip!

Child/parent comments: What if I delete the parent?

If you "own" the parent comment, you can delete it, and it and any children comments YOU made will be gone. Child comments from others will remain, unless THEY delete them.

SEE ALSO: Echo Authentication Features, and why some are better than others.
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