OK, folks, apparently too many people still have problems when trying to post various charts and other images to the forums of this site. So, I decided to write a tutorial, explaining in details how to do it. Even if it doesn't teach you anything you don't already know, I believe that it would still be useful to have it around - e.g., newcomers could be referred to it, in order to avoid answering the same questions over and over again.

So, let's get to the meat of the matter. You are writing a message you intend to post and want to include some image (a stock chart, some funny picture, whatever) in it. How should you proceed?

There are two main approaches, depending on whether the image you want to post resides in a graphic file on your local hard disk or whether it resides on some publicly accessible Web site. Let us examine each one of these two cases in detail.

Posting an image that resides on the Web

First, some preparations. It is wise to have 2 browser windows open - one viewing the Web page with your chart and one viewing the forum on capitalstool where you want to post the image. It also helps to have Notepad open, although it is not necessary. Also, I'll be assuming that you are using Internet Explorer as your Web browser. If you are using something else instead, then some minor parts of the procedure will be slightly different.

The important thing to understand is that you have to post the image (well, a reference to it, actually) - not the Web page containing it. This is the most common mistake people make.

So, first you need to get the reference (URL) of the image. In order to do that, right-click on the image and select Properties from the menu that pops up. A gray dialog will pop up. Look somewhere in the middle of it and you'll notice a field labeled "Address (URL):". (Note: this is not the same as the "Address:" field of your browser's window - i.e., the field where you can type the URL of a site you want to visit.)

Click with your mouse somewhere in the middle of the contents of this "Address (URL)" field. Press Ctrl-A. This will highlight the contents of the field. Now press Ctrl-C. This will copy the contents of the field to Windows' clipboard. The clipboard can hold only one item, so it might be a good idea to switch to Notepad and paste (by pressing Ctrl-V) this contents there - because if you do some other cut-n-pasting (e.g., while entering the message you want to post), this will overwrite the contents of the clipboard. By pasting it in Notepad, you have this contents saved. This contents is the URL of the image you want to post.

The procedure described so far is intended for Internet Explorer users. Users of Netscape have a much easier way - just right-click on the image and select "Copy location" from the menu that pops up. Other Web browsers might require different approaches.

Now, switch to the browser window that looks at the capitalstool forum you want to post your image to and start entering the message you want to post, as you normally do. When you reach the point in your message where you want the chart to appear, look just above the message entering form. Do you see the little gray buttons? One of them is labeled "IMG":



That's the button you need. Click it. A dialog will appear, asking you to enter the complete URL of the image:



Paste there (Ctrl-V) the image URL you took as described above. If, while editing your message, you have managed to destroy the clipboard's contents, either take it from Notepad or just copy it again from the other browser window that is still looking at the chart, using the procedure already described.

Press the OK button on the dialog that is asking you for the URL of the image. That URL will be inserted in your message at the point where you have clicked the "IMG" button. It will be surrounded by the words [IMG] and [/IMG]. They are called "tags" and their meaning is "image URL begins" and "image URL ends" respectively.

Posting "live" charts from various charting sites

For "normal" images the procedure described above should be all you need. However, if you are trying to post some stock chart (e.g., from Yahoo! Finance, BigCharts.com, or somewhere else), chances are that it is "dynamically generated". You don't really need to know what this buzzword means and why it matters. All you need to know is that the software running on this site will allow you to post with IMG tags only URLs that end in ".gif", ".jpg", ".png", ".bmp", etc. - i.e., the extensions used for graphic files. But the "dynamically generated" stock charts from the sites mentioned above normally don't have such URLs. For instance, the URLs of the images of the charts generated by BigCharts.com have URLs that contain some gobledegook like "&foo=bar&snafu=true". If you try to include such an URL between the two IMG tags, this site's software will barf at you with some silly error message.

What to do, then?

Well, it's time to show the stupid computer that you're more clever than it and bypass the silly restriction. So, it wants URLs that end in ".gif", eh? Very well, we'll give it one. Simply append "&.gif" at the end of the URL and before the closing "[/IMG]" tag. (Why the "&"? Because this character is used for separating various parameters on the URL and we don't want our ".gif" to get concatenated to some important parameter and to mess it up.)

For instance, let us assume that the original URL of the image is (the following is a single line)

http://chart.bigcharts.com/bc3/intchart/frames/chart.asp?symb=qqq&compidx=aaaaa%
3A0&ma=0&maval=9&uf=8&lf=268435456&lf2=0&lf3=0&type=4&size=1&state=8
&sid=144065&style=320&time=7&freq=1&comp=NO%5FSYMBOL%5FCHOSEN
&nosettings=1&rand=3815&mocktick=1

(Gosh, isn't that a mouthful! )

After you put it between the two IMG tags, you get

[img]http://chart.bigcharts.com/bc3/intchart/frames/chart.asp?symb=qqq&compidx=aaaaa%
3A0&ma=0&maval=9&uf=8&lf=268435456&lf2=0&lf3=0&type=4&size=1&state=8
&sid=144065&style=320&time=7&freq=1&comp=NO%5FSYMBOL%5FCHOSEN
&nosettings=1&rand=3815&mocktick=1[/img]

After appending "&.gif" to it, you get

[img]http://chart.bigcharts.com/bc3/intchart/frames/chart.asp?symb=qqq&compidx=aaaaa%
3A0&ma=0&maval=9&uf=8&lf=268435456&lf2=0&lf3=0&type=4&size=1&state=8
&sid=144065&style=320&time=7&freq=1&comp=NO%5FSYMBOL%5FCHOSEN
&nosettings=1&rand=3815&mocktick=1&.gif[/img]

and this is ready for posting:





There's still a caveat, though.

Caveat

Some sites do not allow their charts to be displayed elsewhere - you can view them only on the sites where they reside. BTW, the process of including in your message to a Web site an image from another Web site by just referring to it within IMG tags is called "hotlinking". So, some sites simply do not permit hotlinking.

There are various reasons for that. For instance, the site's owner might not want people to see the images without also seeing the advertisements on the Web pages where these images are (e.g., Yahoo's Geocities has such a policy).

Another possible reason is that the site's owner might not want to have to handle the big traffic. Remember, when you post like that an image to a widely read Web page, the Web browser of every person who views the page will go to the original Web site to fetch the image. The Web site where you have posted might be equipped to handle a lot of traffic - but the site where the image actually resides might not be able to do so and it will be swamped by all the people fetching the image from it through your post.

Whatever the reason, you have to respect it. Since many people are not "nice" and since even a few disrespectful (or even just careless and ignorant) people can cause a lot of trouble, the sites who do not want their images hotlinked to usually take technical measures to prevent hotlinking. If you try to include an image from them in your posts, you will fail - either a different message will appear (usually telling you that you shouldn't do what you're trying to do), or simply a red "x" will appear instead of the message you want to post.

In such cases you should take a snapshot of the image to your local hard disk and post it using the method described below.

Also, some sites are subscription-based and their images are in areas protected with a password. If you are a subscriber, you'll be able to see the images - but if you attempt to refer to them from your post elsewhere, people who aren't logged in to the same subscription-only area will not be able to see the image and will be presented with a login dialog instead. (That is, if the site has set up its security properly. Sometimes this is not the case.)

Note: StockCharts.com no longer permits their charts to be hotlinked from this site. So, don't try to post a "live" chart from there by hotlinking to it. Instead, you have two alternatives:

1) Post a link to a Web page on StockCharts.com's site where your chart resides. If it is in a public chartlist, simply use the URL displayed in the "Address:" field of your browser. If the chart is in your private chartlist, however, the procedure is a bit more convoluted. First, you have to obtain the URL of the image of the chart, instead of the URL of the Web page it resides on. How to do this is explained above - right-click on the image, select Properties from the menu that pops up, and so on. After you get the URL of the image, paste it in your message and then change "SharpChartv05.ServletDriver?chart=" part of that URL to "SC.web?c=". (Note: the letter case is important - don't type "sc.web" instead of "SC.web".) One more thing - once you post your message containing such an URL, do not open it for editing, because the URL will get screwed up. If you have to edit it, during the editing process delete all such URLs and put them there again.

2) Take a snapshot (still image) of your chart. You can either store your snapshot in your StockCharts.com account and hotlink to it here (StockCharts.com allows this) - or you can save the image to your local disk and attach it to your post here as explained below.

Posting images that reside on your local hard disk

You can attach only one such image per post - and you can include it only at the end of your post; not in the middle of the text. In order to do it, proceed as follows.

When you finish entering the text of you message, click on the "Browse" button which is beneath the message entering form:



A dialog will appear, allowing you to browse your local hard disk and to select the file, which contains the image you want to attach. Once you have selected it, click on the "Open" button of the dialog. The dialog will actually close (surprise, huh?) - but the full path of the selected file will appear in the field to the left of the "Browse" button.

Note, however, that there is a rather strict limit on the size of the file that contains the image you want to attach. In other words, you can't attach too big files. The text on the message entering form suggests that the limit is 100 Kb - but I have the impression that it is even smaller.

What to do if your file is larger? Well, there are several options:

1) Use some graphics editor to reduce the size of the image.

2) If possible, use fewer colors. The more colorful your image is, the larger the file that contains it. That doesn't mean that an image which is almost entirely black will be too large. If the image is mostly of a single color, that's not a problem, no matter what that color is. The size of the image starts to increase when there are many different colors, beautiful diffused backgrounds with pictures, etc.

3) Convert the image to a JPG file of a lower visual quality.

Most graphics editors (even such simple ones like PBrush that comes with Windows) will allow you to perform these simple image modifications.

Oh, and one more trick. Suppose you really want to include the image in the middle of your text - but the image resides on your local hard disk. As mentioned above, the "direct" approach can only append the image after your text. However, you can go to one of the "Test" forums (e.g., "Try It Out") and upload your image there, in a message with no meaningful text at all. Once this is done, the image already resides on a publicly accessible Web site (this one), so you can use the procedure described earlier to include it (via an URL) anywhere in your messages.