Board index Photography Technical Questions URL links in photo text descriptions

Technical Questions

URL links in photo text descriptions

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sgitlin
 
Posts: 20

URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Sat May 20, 2017 11:38 pm


Is there a way that I can select a portion of a photo's text description, and set up a link to another website? Example - I want to provide a link to Wikipedia for a building name in a text description. I know I can insert html code in the description, but it would but it would certainly be a lot easier if I could select the relevant text, click on a link icon, and just insert the url of the target website.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Stew

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Sun May 21, 2017 6:47 am


sgitlin wrote:Is there a way that I can select a portion of a photo's text description, and set up a link to another website? Example - I want to provide a link to Wikipedia for a building name in a text description. I know I can insert html code in the description, but it would but it would certainly be a lot easier if I could select the relevant text, click on a link icon, and just insert the url of the target website.


This is really more of a question for the Q&A forum; this one is about technical photography issues.

Unfortunately the short answer is no you can't. The description input is just a plain old text box with no extra controls built in as there are in the forum. (The forum is a pre-packaged application called phpBB; it isn't really part of PBase so much as just bolted on which is why the functionality is different.) Though even then the forum posting box generates phpBB codes rather than raw HTML ones.

For my own part I've created a Microsoft Word document which has VBA shortcuts which insert HTML code, including anchor tags. It was more up front work but has saved me a lot of time in the longer run. Another possible solution might be to get a free, basic HTML editor which has similar functionality built in. You can then just copy and paste it into your descriptions.

Unfortunately I doubt you'll ever see the sort of functionality that you're talking about built into PBase... but to be fair a lot of other sites don't have it either.

sgitlin
 
Posts: 20

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Sun May 21, 2017 1:56 pm


akmc_in_au, sorry for posting the question in the wrong forum. I saw the words 'technical questions' and didn't look further to see that it was photography technical questions vs. pbase usage.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my query. I was afraid that your reply was what I suspected. I hadn't thought about using an html editor for writing the description, and pasting that into the description. I think I'll give that a try.

Thanks again,

Stew

dougj
 
Posts: 2276

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Sun May 21, 2017 4:54 pm


I try to make it simple for me with my bird galleries. I use a Word document as a template and edit as needed. Here's an example of the text that is in the caption box:

"Scientific name: Passerculus sandwichensis

The Savannah Sparrow is a small American sparrow. The common name comes from Savannah, Georgia, where one of the first specimens of this bird was collected.

These birds forage on the ground or in low bushes; particularly in winter they are also found in grazed low-growth grassland. They mainly eat seeds, but also eat insects in the breeding season. They are typically encountered as pairs or family groups in the breeding season, and assemble in flocks for the winter migration.

<A href=" https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_sparrow " >Click for more information on this species at Wikipedia </A>
Press the back button on the browser to return to this page"

The last text in green is the HTML code, I added a space after the https so this post would display it as text. Here's a link to this bird if you want to see what it looks like.
http://www.pbase.com/dougj/image/165181665

I hope this helps...

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Mon May 22, 2017 12:04 am


dougj wrote:I try to make it simple for me with my bird galleries. I use a Word document as a template and edit as needed.


You can keep it even simpler by skipping Word and just typing directly into PBase's description box in the browser... but that still doesn't provide the kind of automated link insertion that was being asked about. If that's what's wanted, at least a little complication is required.

One thing that might minimise it, and which requires no external software at all, is an extension which allows you to insert boilerplate text into the description box itself; in this case, the boilerplate would be the anchor tags, with the web link being just a variable that will pop up a dialog box for input. This is an example for Firefox but I'm sure there's something similar available for pretty much any browser.

I'll admit that even before I had my Word VBA template I wrote the descriptions up in a vanilla Word document (complete with copying and pasting to create the links, much as I expect you're doing) but that was only because I didn't want the images sitting up there without descriptions for any length of time while I wrote up the descriptions directly on PBase.

That was before I realised that if you write the descriptions and paste them into the IPTC Core's Description field in Bridge, PBase will automatically read them. It also has the advantage of embedding the description in the image itself, making it more self-descriptive and easier to load to any other photo sites which also read that field.

dougj wrote:<A href=" https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_sparrow " >Click for more information on this species at Wikipedia </A>
Press the back button on the browser to return to this page"

The last text in green is the HTML code, I added a space after the https so this post would display it as text.


Just for reference, you can use the Code tag in phpBB forums (5th button from the left above the main textbox when you're in message editing mode) to show exact code without needing to alter it. For example:
Code: Select all
<A href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_sparrow ">Click for more information on this species at Wikipedia</A>

dougj
 
Posts: 2276

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Mon May 22, 2017 2:14 pm


Good points Alan.I've tested putting descriptions in the IPTC core data with Bridge but I haven't found a field that works for this with PBase. Which one do you use?

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: URL links in photo text descriptions

Post Mon May 22, 2017 11:37 pm


dougj wrote:Good points Alan.I've tested putting descriptions in the IPTC core data with Bridge but I haven't found a field that works for this with PBase. Which one do you use?


Hi Doug,

I use two, both under IPTC Core; Title, which the PBase uploader feeds directly into the Title field on the image editing page (no more needing to get rid of the .jpg extension or avoid special characters, yay!), and Description, which feeds directly into the Caption field on the PBase edit page. Both work the same way on Flickr.

That said, this is with the newer Drag & Drop uploader. I remember that the old uploader was less capable in handling metadata but I can't recall whether these were part of the problem.

Two things that I have never been able to get to upload are the camera lens name (though the Batch Update Selected Images functionality can often but not always help with that (depending on how many different lenses I switched to during a shoot), and the location. I always fill in the City, State/Province, Country and often sub-location (usually by metadata template if it's a place that I go to often) but none of those (or any other location fields I've tried) have ever loaded into the PBase Location field. Accordingly that's another one that I need to deal with manually, often again with Batch Update. Still, the Title and Caption / Description ones used to be the time-consuming and tedious ones, since neither of those can be batch updated.


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