BlueJay, the reason you are getting purple clicky things is probably down to your broswer. Many browsers let you set default colours for links. In the case of Internet Explorer 5, these are changed by Tools/Internet Options and clicking on colors in the General Tab. In my other browser (Netscape 4.7) these setings are changed by Edit/Preferences and selecting color from the tree list on the left.

I'm not sure if I am understanding your second question correctly but if you mean you had all the html tags showing when you entered your post, that is correct. It is only when the message is posted and then the page is reloaded that it will look OK (when you reload it, the browser interprets these codes as having special meanings - if you viewed the HTML source for your post, you would find it is still exactly the same as you entered it).

Jon