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Making the heart and other symbols
Have you ever wondered how people get those little "heart" symbols to display in their journal entries?
HTML has a limited number of letters and numbers that it can display, but it has a large group of "special characters" that you can manually write into your journal or web page. Some of the special characters include all the international symbols and letters, like €. All of the special characters are also available under the Unicode-supported character set and have Unicode values assigned to them as well.
A special character typically uses this format: &character_code; where character_code is the code for the special character.
When you use a special character, it always starts with a & and it always ends with a ;-- there are no spaces in a special character, and there are no < or > symbols either.
The ♥ symbol is a special character symbol. It's not supported by all web browsers, and any computer trying to display it must have the symbol installed in order to display-- if it doesn't, the symbol will usually show up as a little box. The character code for ♥ is hearts. To make a heart in your journal or web page, put the following into your entry:
♥
It will appear as:
♥
HTML supports other special characters, including ♠ (♠), ♦ (♦), and ♣ (♣). Note that, unlike the other playing card suit symbols, ♦ is a very poorly-supported special character; use it sparingly, if at all. For a list of special characters in HTML, search your favorite web search engine for "HTML special characters."
Note that you can combine these characters with HTML from the Change the Size, Color, and Font of Certain Words Tutorial to create, for example, pink hearts (♥), green clovers (♣), and blue diamonds (♦).
Additional Resources
Change the Size, Color, and Font of Certain Words Tutorial.
LiveJournal's HTML Color Code Chart
contributed by mortaine
HTML has a limited number of letters and numbers that it can display, but it has a large group of "special characters" that you can manually write into your journal or web page. Some of the special characters include all the international symbols and letters, like €. All of the special characters are also available under the Unicode-supported character set and have Unicode values assigned to them as well.
A special character typically uses this format: &character_code; where character_code is the code for the special character.
When you use a special character, it always starts with a & and it always ends with a ;-- there are no spaces in a special character, and there are no < or > symbols either.
The ♥ symbol is a special character symbol. It's not supported by all web browsers, and any computer trying to display it must have the symbol installed in order to display-- if it doesn't, the symbol will usually show up as a little box. The character code for ♥ is hearts. To make a heart in your journal or web page, put the following into your entry:
♥
It will appear as:
♥
HTML supports other special characters, including ♠ (♠), ♦ (♦), and ♣ (♣). Note that, unlike the other playing card suit symbols, ♦ is a very poorly-supported special character; use it sparingly, if at all. For a list of special characters in HTML, search your favorite web search engine for "HTML special characters."
Note that you can combine these characters with HTML from the Change the Size, Color, and Font of Certain Words Tutorial to create, for example, pink hearts (♥), green clovers (♣), and blue diamonds (♦).
Additional Resources
Change the Size, Color, and Font of Certain Words Tutorial.
LiveJournal's HTML Color Code Chart
contributed by mortaine