Dragging images around the intertubes
Posted by ark, ,
Here's a top tip I've been using for a short while now that should make things a lot easier for you.

In GMail and Blogger when you're in the fancy rich text wysiwyg editor you can just drag images from elsewhere on the web and they'll be embedded perfectly for you. Just like that...

I find this ridiculously easy and intuitive but never really tried it until someone told me about it. It makes it trivial to embed thumbnails from Picasaweb into a blog post and allows you to show people what you mean (if you're talking about a product) without needing to attach an image.

Until recently I've had to have two browser windows open so that I can drag the image over, alternatively you can select the text around the image and hit copy and then move to the tab with your composition in it and hit paste and then remove the extra text. In firefox there didn't seem to be a way to copy the image (only the url). However I just found a neat way around that too. Google Notebook. It's a slick firefox extension to allow you to take snippets off websites. You can open notebook on one tab, drag down the image you want and then move to the new tab and drag it into your composition window, easy peasy. Note: you need to start typing in a new note to let it know you're going to enter something, enter one letter and then you can drag images over. You can even make notebooks of things you like to include, perhaps the Yahoo Emoticons? After all everyone knows they're SO much better than the lame Google Talk emoticons. I reformatted the layout to have the ones I like at the top and a nice two columns. Whle writing this I was delighted to find out they added a wave :-h it's been the one I've been missing for a while.

:-ccall me 8->daydreaming
:)]on the phone ~X(at wits' end
:-hwave :-ttime out
:)happy :(sad
;)winking :Dbig grin
;;)batting eyelashes >:D<big hug
:-/confused :xlove struck
:">blushing :Ptongue
:-*kiss =((broken heart
:-Osurprise X(angry
:>smug B-)cool
:-Sworried #:-Swhew!
>:)devil :((crying
:))laughing :|straight face
/:)raised eyebrow =))rolling on the floor
O:-)angel :-Bnerd
=;talk to the hand I-)sleepy
8-|rolling eyes L-)loser
:-&sick :-$don't tell anyone
[-(not talking :O)clown
8-}silly <:-Pparty
(:|yawn =P~drooling
:-?thinking #-od'oh
=D>applause :-SSnailbiting
@-)hypnotized :^oliar
:-wwaiting :-<sigh
>:Pphbbbbt <):)cowboy

Warning: the image you include like this will still be on the server it always was, the owner of that server can then change the image to say "Stop sucking my bandwidth" or suchlike, so if you have a super popular blog, this might be a dickish thing to do.

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