Right above the comment box are four styling buttons. Bold, italic, underline, and color. Click on any of them and they will create styling tags like this -> [ color=blue ][ /color ] for blue and [ u ][ /u ] for underline.
Any text INSIDE these tags will be styled accordingly. Keep in mind you can use multiple tags together so [ color=blue ][ u ]text[ /u ][ /color ] would look like -> text
Note: I added spaces in the tags so you could read them. These tags also work in the forums, so you wouldn't see the examples if I wrote them without the spaces.
Oh, an easy way to apply styling is highlight the text you want modified with the mouse and then click the styling buttons. The tags should automatically appear around the text.
Yes, the options have always been there. It's just most people screwed up using them correctly until recently. The vast majority of users always put the text outside the tags, and therefore the colors would never show up correctly. Only recently have a few newcomers managed to figure the system out.
