Sharing a Blog Article

As most of you probably know when it comes to using computers there are usually several different ways to do just about everything. All these options can be confusing, but each way usually has advantages and disadvantages.

I recently became aware of a classmate's efforts to share a Fair Park blog article with another person. In looking at the different ways you can do that I initially thought why not just give the other person the web address for our class website and tell them to click on the link to the Blog web page. However, I realized that depending on their computer skills you may have to also provide some detailed guidance to get them to the specific article in the blog that you want them to read.

A second option is to try copying and pasting the article into an email. However, you may wind up including more copied material in the email than you intended unless you know how to delete the copied material you didn't want.

A third way is to use the Email Post feature that is part of each blog article. Just go to the blog article you want to share and click on the envelope icon with the arrow on it at the bottom right of the article (see below). Then follow the instructions that appear. The person you send the email to will receive a message from you with whatever comments you wish to make and a link that they can click on to go directly to the article that you are emailing from.

ADDENDUM - 5/22/2006

I have just discovered a fourth way to share a blog article and it may be the best way of all. Notice that at the bottom of every blog article there is a line of text that shows who posted the article and the day and date of the posting. If you move your mouse cursor over the day and date a hand icon will appear along with a little popup box indicating this is a permanent link. Right click your mouse on the day and date line and choose Copy Shortcut. Then go to the email you plan to send and choose Edit/Paste from the menu line to paste the shortcut into the body of the email. You may have to put your cursor at the end of the shortcut and press the spacebar once to make the link activate. You'll recognize when that happens because the text will change colors and a line may appear underneath the shortcut. Add any comments you want to the email and send it. When the recipient clicks on the shortcut link it will open to the article you want to share with them. Send yourself a test email to see how easy this works.