How to get embedded images saved on server?

Question

Let's say I'm answering a question and want to include a small schematic image in-line with the answer.

First, the documentation for the post editor markup language is well hidden. When I actually had this problem, I looked all around the window and found no "edit help" link or anything like it. I found something like it later when editing one of my posts, but that seems to be hit or miss. For example, right now after scrolling down the browser window there is a box "Similar Questions" where the other time there was a box with links to editing help. Right now I see no way to access editing help from this page.

Anyway, apparently "!", followed by desription in brackets, followed by a link in parenthesis makes the content of the linked image appear in line. However, that is still linking to the image in the temp directory on my server. I'm not going to keep it there for more than a few days. How do I get the forum server to make a copy and then tell me the link to that copy so that the embedded image remains in the post after I delete the temporary copy on my server?

Also, where is this documented? I'd like to RTFM, but all I've found is https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help, which doesn't say anything about copying references to the forum server.

Answer 1

You can use hotkeys with the WMD Markdown editor. The hotkeys are visible on hover, but that doesn't work in your case. You're probably right, they should be added to the editing-help page.

They're also visible from the page source, but you probably didn't want to have to resort to that, so here they are (in order as shown in the image):

• CTRL-B - Bold
• CTRL-I - Italic
• CTRL-L - Link
• CTRL-Q - Block Quote
• CRTL-K - Code Block
• CTRL-G - Graphic
• CTRL-O - Ordered (numbered) List
• CTRL-U - Unordered (bullet) List
• CTRL-H - Heading
• CTRL-R - Horizontal Line
• CTRL-Z - Undo
• CTRL-Shift-Z - Undo

The one you want in this case is CTRL-G. Regrettably, you'll have to move your hands from the keyboard because you can't tab through this AJAX box.

Answer 2

When you are composing a post, help can be accessed by clicking the ? on the right edge of the post section. This will expand an area with different topics. When you click a heading, it will show the help for that, but also animate the associated icon in the toolbar.

When you click the image icon in the toolbar, it will bring up a dialog that lets you add an image.

(Note that for users with low rep, this help area is shown by default.)

Answer 3

When you use the built-in image button, either uploading or pasting in a link, it automatically mirrors the image on imgur.com, and uses that, so that the original is no longer needed.

imgur using button:

if you type in the code by hand (why would you do this? o_O) then it links to the external image:

not imgur:

Answer 4

This is a test.

I got this image uploaded to imgur by using the ctrl-g method Kevin mentioned. Thanks Kevin, it seems to work. One minor wrinkle though. When I hit ctrl-g I got this little window that had a text line in it that said something like "pathname on your computer". However, I couldn't type there, no characters showed up. I had to click BROWSE, then enter the pathname in the window that popped from that. Not a big deal, but it doesn't make sense that the first text line is there if it can't be used.

It's interesting to note that the HTML CENTER tag apparently doesn't work here. I enclosed the image reference in CENTER tags, but it sill shows up left aligned, at least in the preview window. Again, not a big deal.

This is centered text.

Nope, that doesn't work either. Oh well.