User:Shawndouglas/sandbox

Sandbox begins below

You'll notice a box with text and a big blue "i" in it above. We'll get to that in a second. But first let's talk about the...

Links

This is me making an internal link to the template "ombox," which is used on this page: Template:Ombox

This is me making an internal link to the template "ombox," but this time making different text appear for the link: I'm such a rebel

This is me making an external link to the same template located on Wikipedia: [1]

This is me making an external link to the same template located on Wikipedia, using different link text: Why is there no pipe in this type of link?

You should notice the difference between these two types of links and how to format them. 

You can make an internal link by using a set of double square brackets. The title can be left as the default:
[[Laboratory informatics]] yields...

Laboratory informatics

Or you can give it a new title by adding a pipe (|) and then typing the text you want to appear in place of the original:
[[Laboratory informatics|cool laboratory stuff]] yields...

cool laboratory stuff

You can make an external link by using a set of single square brackets. The title can be left blank:
[http://www.nupedia.com] yields...

[2]

However, it's better you give it a title by adding one space and typing the text you want to appear in place of the URL:
[http://www.nupedia.com Nupedia] yields...

Nupedia

Consult the relevant Help:Contents section for more information.

Templates

Let's get back to that box with text and a big blue "i" at the top. We call that an "infobox." That's created using the template "ombox," referenced above in the first set of example links. Open one of those links in a new tab or window to learn more about this template.

Templates are distinct because they contain two braces in front (like this: {{ ) and two in the back (like this: }} ).

Here are some internal links to pages on this wiki that utilize a variety of different templates. Let's look at each page (open in a new tab or window) and choose the "edit" option to see the code:

• LIMS vendor
• LIMSWiki:Vendor page
• 2nd Sight Solutions
• National Cancer Institute
• LIMSWiki:Product page

Formatting text

Bold text

Here I bold this text for effect: Do you think it looks ok?

I can even make a link appear in bold like this: LIMS vendor

Italic text

Here's italic text for you: What do you think?

Like bold text, I can italicize a link like this: LIMS vendor

Preformatted text

Open the "LIMSWiki:Vendor page" using the link above in the Templates section. You can open it in a new tab/window by right-clicking the link and choosing the appropriate option.

You'll notice that there are two gray boxes with wiki code in them on this page. How do you display that wiki code like that without the browser running it? By using the preformatted text tag:

<pre>This is preformatted text. Here is the ombox code used on this page:

{{ombox
| type      = notice
| style     = width: 960px;
| text      = This is my sandbox, where I play with features and test MediaWiki code. If you wish to leave a comment for me, please see [[User_talk:Shawndouglas|my discussion page]] instead.<p></p>
}}
</pre>

So you essentially use the <pre> tag to display the code without rendering it. In the sentence previous to this, I used a different technique, however, to display the tag:

So you essentially use the <nowiki><pre></nowiki> tag to display the code without rendering it.

I used the <nowiki> tag to display what would otherwise be rendered as code. Note that with both tags, I had to "close" their use with a corresponding duplicate but with the "/" character in front of the word.

This may seem a bit confusing at first, but don't worry. You won't use it often. I wanted to introduce it for the next topic: spacing.

Spacing

This is my first line of text. This is my second line of text.

Here's what I entered into the edit box to get the above to appear:

This is my first line of text.
This is my second line of text.

Notice what happens if I don't put a space between the lines of text in the edit screen? The lines run together. You'd think putting a line under another with a hard return would be enough, but it's not. You must add an additional hard return, creating a space between the lines in the edit box.

I actually want it to look like this:

This is my first line of text.

This is my second line of text.

So I have to edit it like this in the code:

This is my first line of text.

This is my second line of text.

Citation

To begin using citations, it's easy to start with a copy/paste of existing citation code. Inline citations are added directly after a sources piece of information or quote.

You'll want to use this page as your initial guide: LIMSWiki:Citation guidelines

You can copy code from there, paste it into your edit, and then edit the values of the fields. That page also has links to the original templates in case you need additional attributes not listed in the examples.

Also, it's imperative to include a references section on any page that includes inline citations. Otherwise, pages won't show up properly. You do that by placing the following code:

==References==
<references />

Images

This is me playing with linking to images on Wikimedia Commons. We'll get into image uploading and linking a little later.