The html times

About the html times

We want you to download and share, syndicate, and grow our content. It's like John Gilmore said, “The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it.”

The html times offers free downloadable content. Please republish it. Because heck, we're looking around for the owner of this content, and darn, we can't find him.

Do us a solid though: Link back with some cred, and let us know so we can link to you!

Write for the html times

The html times accepts written submissions of 1200 – 1500 words in the following formats:

• XHTML
• Microsoft Word
• RTF
• Plain Text

Your work should focus around a central argument dealing with the freedom of information. Present a clear thesis and conclusion, and drive home your article with examples (code, screencast, downloads, etc). You should have created the content you submit and cite sources where appropriate.

If you would like to write something longer, that is probably ok, send it in. We decided that the html times will not be contributing to the death of the long form essay.

As you write for the html times, it is still important to remember that most users will be reading on a screen. So you might think about formating your work in a readable manner. Do not be afraid of your best readability friends:

• <b>bold</b>
• <i>italic</i>
• <h3>

  large heading

  </h3>
• <h4>

  medium heading

  </h4>
• <ul> <li>list item</li> (like what I'm in now)</ul>
• (It also helps to put each of your paragraphs in <p>paragraph<p> tags)
• Do not use <h1> or <h2>, they are reserved

If you want to make your work super readable, you should write short paragraphs, using bolded text to prevent skimming and links to engender authority.

Read Jakob Nielsen’s article on How Users Read on the Web for some format and flow pointers. When you are done, double check that following Jakob Neilson’s advice doesn't make your content suck.

If you employ code examples of any nature they should:

• validate for XHTML 1.0 strict
• render well in all major browsers (IE 6, Firefox 2 & Safari 2 and up)
• remain readable when javascript and style sheets are turned off
• Where possible, code samples should also use good clean markup, maximizing the semantic meaning of the content they are dealing with.
• Be wrapped in <div class="code"><pre>this</pre></div>
• Inline code can be wrapped in <code>this</code>

All links should include a title attribute that describes where the link is going. Similarly, images should have a descriptive alt attribute. Finally, escaping dangerous characters with the proper HTML entities is always real helpful.