I’m sure most of you have already figured it out, but I just wanted to explain the little signifiers[tippy title=”*”]Like this one.[/tippy] that I’ve been using in posts over the last few weeks. As you will have no doubt figured out by now, I am very fond of footnotes when I’m writing,[tippy title=”†”]…because they act like little asides. Sometimes I want to ‘comment’ on something, but also not interfere with the flow of the story.[/tippy] but since this is a hyperlink medium I’ve always found it a little irritating to make it necessary for my readers to have to scroll to the bottom of the page to read the jolly asides.[tippy title=”‡”]See how much I care about you all![/tippy] It’s especially annoying in long posts, and I fear that it is actually more upsetting to the flow of the narrative than if I’d actually chucked the comment in at the time.

In the modern world of internet communication, where we should not be under the thrall of rigid page-based text, it seemed to me odd that there was no way of ‘hyper-commenting’ on what I was writing. For a while I tried a plug-in called Tippy that was promising, but it was buggy and refused to work properly under Safari.

Well I am pleased to say that Tippy is now fully functional and after trialling it for a few weeks I am satisfied that it will be reliable enough to install permanently here on The Cow.

So, now when you see the little red characters popping up here and there, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the symbol and you will see the footnote. It will fade away once you move your mouse off again. If there is a link in the footnote, you can click on it and it will activate in a new window.[tippy title=”**”]Try it! Cool
huh?![/tippy]

I’ll still keep the footnotes at the bottom of the posts for all you Old School types who refuse to have anything to do with this new-fangled quantum-digital-electromagnetic-fields jiggery-pokery, but for the rest of you, I hope this new functionality[tippy title=”††”]
– what I shall henceforth dub ‘dynamic meta-commenting’…[/tippy] adds a new level of smoothness and enjoyment to your Cow experience.

Thank you for your attention. We now resume normal programming.

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*Like this one.

†…because they act like little asides. Sometimes I want to ‘comment’ on something, but also not interfere with the flow of the story.

‡See how much I care about you all!

**Try it! Cool huh?!

††- what I shall henceforth dub ‘dynamic meta-commenting’…

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