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Welcome to the 'Cool Little Things' section of the h2g2 FAQ. This is where you can find out some of the cool things you can do with h2g2, from fish to smileys.

If you want to see a complete list of questions answered by the h2g2 FAQ, you can go to the h2g2 FAQ Index at any time.

Contents of this Section

• How do I make those nice yellow smiley faces and pictures in Conversation Postings?
• How do I find out who else is online?
• What other cool secret stuff is there?

How do I make those nice yellow smiley faces and pictures in Conversation Postings?

Any smileys you enter in Postings will be automatically translated into the relevant graphic (the same applies to your Journal and plain text Guide Entries). A list of the complete smiley list can be found here, along with the codes you need to type to make smileys appear, and the GuideML tags you can use to put smileys in your GuideML Guide Entries.

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How can I find out who else is online?

The Who's Online button, which can be found on every page, is a brilliant means of keeping track of your friends on h2g2. Click on the button and a small, rectangular box pops up with the names of everyone who's currently on h2g2. You can order the list by User ID (your unique U123456 number that can be found in the URL of your Personal Space) or by Nickname.

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What other cool secret stuff is there?

• Who's Online Link
  If you want to put a link to Who's Online pop-up box from one of your pages, then you can use the <WHO-IS-ONLINE> tag. Simply put <WHO-IS-ONLINE> and </WHO-IS-ONLINE> tags round a piece of text, just like you would with a link, and then that text will link to the Who's Online box, as in:
  <WHO-IS-ONLINE>Click here to see who's online</WHO-IS-ONLINE>

• Infinite Improbability Drive
  The following URLs will take you to various randomly selected entries on h2g2:

  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/RandomEntry will take you to a randomly selected Guide Entry of any type.

  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/RandomNormalEntry will take you to a randomly selected 'normal' Guide Entry (a 'normal' Guide Entry being one that isn't edited or recommended).

  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/RandomRecommendedEntry will take you to a randomly selected Recommended Guide Entry (ie one that has been picked from Peer Review by a Scout but which is still in the process of being edited).

  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/RandomEditedEntry will take you to a randomly selected Edited Guide Entry.

  Going to these URLs will retain the URL in the address field of your browser, so you can step through lots of random entries by clicking on the 'Refresh' button in your browser. You can include these links in GuideML using <LINK HREF="RandomEntry">...</LINK> or similar.

• Skins
  Make sure you check out the section on skins too. They are amazingly cool.

• Forum parsing
  
  If you type any of the following into a Posting, they will automatically be translated into links:

  • A123456 (but only if it's a valid entry number)
  • U123456
  • F123456
  • F123456?thread=123456...
  • C123456

  Also, if you enclose something inside <./> and </.> tags then it will be translated into a link to that h2g2 page. For example, <./>PeerReview</.> would link to Peer Review, <./>Feedback</.> to the Feedback Forum, and so on.

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