THIS IS NOT A LINK

Heaven-forbid, if it’s all-caps someone might think it’s a link.
This is a debate we used to have at the mighty Mezz; how to have our web-site not turn off potentials users.
It arose out of the fact most at the mighty Mezz had Internet-Explorer 5.0 for a browser — only Matt Ried (the webmaster) and I had 5.1.
In fact my browser at first was 5.0, but I upgraded to 5.1 MYSELF (not a link). It was free; and the ‘pyooter-guru acquiesced.
The HTML-code for the web-site had been written by the webmaster; the way I probably would have done it: i.e. try something, and then see how it looks under his browser (5.1).
The end-result was the site looked FINE (not a link) under 5.1, but was all-over-the-map under 5.0.
A coworker would fire up the site with 5.0, and story-text bled off the screen, pictures didn’t appear, and huge blank white areas did.
You could hardly tell it was a site.
And so ensued the debate.
“The average Granny,” I said; “is firing up the site with a browser from the last century, on a PC held together with paperclips and bobbie-pins.”
“They’re getting it over a phone-modem. They don’t even have cable. We’re using a T-1.”
“Well tough!” the webmaster would say. “They need to upgrade. I can’t revise that web-site just to accommodate antiques.”
So now I guess I have to dumb down my content.
Heaven-forbid someone might mistake underlining for a link.
So okay if they did — in which case you try it.
“HMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNN......... Nothing happened. Must not be a link; ah-duh.”
And so the mastery of ‘pyooter-trickery gets sent packing; drowned by boring conventionality.
Obviously Marcy would only get everyone at FlagOut upset. Her blog has lots of HTML-formatting — which she can do.
I haven’t tried — why bother? No one reads blogs anyway, and the blog-site template looks acceptable.
So the blog will continue to have rudimentary HTML: underlining, bold, italic, red-fonts, bullets, etc.
Links too. Dave Wheeler’s blog has links galore — and they’re HTML h-ref tags; a blog-thing.
As I recall, the bluster-boy noisily accused me of a fast-one when I made text italic. (Oh, how the mighty have fallen.)
But that won’t happen any more on FlagOut. It might get perceived as a link.
Which I guess means no more attaching pictures to a text-post. The HTML button is verbotten. Hup-hup!

“The mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper where I once worked.

The “‘pyooter-guru” was the computer-techy at the mighty Mezz.

I’m accused of too much underlining, which can be confused with a link.

“Marcy” was a coworker at the mighty Mezz. She worked in the cubicle next to me.

The “bluster-boy” is my macho younger brother-in-Boston.

RE: “Which I guess means no more attaching pictures to a text-post. The HTML button is verbotten.........” Our family’s web-site (FlagOut) will only attach pictures to a text-post if HTML is enabled.