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General Discussion

Posted by james white
james white
78,399 Points

Using a Shrug emoji / emoticon on the forums and the https://wac.a8b5.edgecastcdn.net cloud storage of images..

I have been accused of 'nitpicking' about the Treehouse forums in this long thread:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/some-questions-about-treehouse-including-internals-and-a-few-suggestions

I plead guilt of course. :thumbsup:

The standard emoji for Markdown

http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/

...doesn't include a

:shrug:

...so just in case someone does want to use a custom emoji /emoticon, what you had to do is find one you want to use, like this one:

http://www.speedtest.trynull.com/images/shrug.png

Then you have to use the special '![alt text]' tag described on this page:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/howto-guide-markdown-within-posts

...to embed it on a forum posts, like so:

alt text

The interesting thing is that once you do so,

(and later go back to edit the post)

the '![alt text]' tag will be gone and the Treehouse forum converts it (somehow) into a cloud resource like:

https://wac.a8b5.edgecastcdn.net/80A8B5/user-images/d909589f3a796c18a947ee248d8600706edede34/687474703a2f2f7777772e7370656564746573742e7472796e756c6c2e636f6d2f696d616765732f73687275672e706e67

(wow, that's a long link..and due to some kind of bug / limitation / 'feature' of the forum tends to extend out awkwardly (not wrap) into the next 'Tips for asking questions' column after the first couple of lines on my version of Firefox).

Note: I got this link from looking at the image source of the shrug picture on this post:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/emberjs-challenge-application-template

However (and here's the thing) you CAN NOT USE (or re-use) this cloud resource by simply embedded in a forum post (or even embedded it inside one of the special '![alt text]' MarkDown tags) .

Instead, every time you want to use a custom emoji /emoticon,

you have to recreate the special '![alt text]' tag,

with the link to the original image, inside of it.

So remember to bookmark those custom emoji / emoticon images!

Now if I could only remember where I got the facepalm Homer Simpson "doh!" cartoon image I embedded in this thread:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/android-weatherapp-creating-a-model-object-pojo-challenge

Note to moderators:

Of course I imagine you're not happy with embedding ANY images in forum thread.

But this method also works for screenshots (which I wish more people would embed).

Also..you (the 'mods') probably think that all emoticons are just "fluff".

I, of course, must disagree.

It's easy to 'misread' peoples text comments

because the non-verbal aspect

(i.e. reading their body language)

as they are 'saying' what they are saying)

is missing..

Plus I think they visually 'break up' the monotony of just reading blocks of text after blocks of text,

as you search the forum for help on the challenges (before you have to start a thread yourself).

I just wish I could be 'kind' with the cloud image resources and somehow 'recycle' them, but there doesn't seem to be a way..as least not that I know of...