Coding4Fun Article Guidelines

Basic Ground Rules

In order to preserve integrity of the Coding4Fun site, a few basic ground rules apply.
Microsoft reserves the right to refuse inappropriate content. Some types of inappropriate content include:

• Violating software EULA’s or otherwise writing articles which encourage readers to break the law. For example, we aren’t able to publish articles about hacking your Xbox or removing DVD encryption from movies to make “backup copies.” However, articles about tracking your Halo 2 scores or managing information about your DVD movie collection are completely valid ideas of Coding4Fun articles.
• If you submit intellectual property to Coding4Fun in the form of source code or otherwise, you are making the representation that this is your own intellectual property which you give freely to the audience of Coding4Fun. You should not include intellectual property from other contributors without their express permission to do so.
• Generally speaking, we won’t be publishing articles that promote technologies which directly compete with Microsoft. (After all, Microsoft is paying the bills for us to host this content.) So “How to trick out your Linux box” is probably not something we’ll publish, but we’re open to articles like “How to consume to Linux-hosted XML Web services using the .NET Framework.” If you have any doubt about your article idea, please contact us before you write your article.
• Again, we reserve the right to refuse content based on other reasons that may not be listed here. Hopefully this will never be a problem, but we have to state it here just in case.

Choosing a Topic

Make sure your topic is relevant to Coding4Fun. If you want to submit an article comparing implementations of Model-View-Controller frameworks, you’ve picked the wrong site. If on the other hand you want to review open source game engines, you’ve found your home. Focus first on finding an interesting topic, then nail the technical details of how you implemented your solution.

Technical Accuracy

Article authors are responsible for technical accuracy of any source code you submit along with your article. Performing basic security reviews, virus checks, and quality assurance are top priorities for ensuring good Coding4Fun content.

Tools & Platforms

Most articles will center around applications that can be created with free tools like Visual Studio Express, but other development environments such as Visual Studio Tools for Office, Mobile development, PowerShell, and other fun, cool technologies are more than welcome.

What Programming Language?

One of our key tenets for Coding4Fun v2 is to be language agnostic. Source code must be submitted in both Visual Basic and C# at a minimum to appeal to the widest range of developers possible. Source code snippets in your article should be in both C# and VB. If your source code is written in C++ or J# then it does not need to be provided in VB and C# since these are unique languages with unique audiences. Also, if you have good reasons for not supplying source code in both languages we will consider exemptions if you email us. There is a decent VB/C# code converter available online at http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/CodeTranslator/Default.aspx. It won’t do 100% of the conversion for you, but it’s a great kick-start.

What Format?

Articles should be submitted in HTML format with minimal styling. If you are including additional files like images, it’s best to ZIP your .HTML along with your images.

Writing a Good Article

A good article consists of a few sections:

• Article Metadata Information – See Appendix section for details
• Introduction – Draw the reader in and convince them to read the rest of your article. For example, what inspired you to build this application? Why will their life be better by reading your article (e.g. “After reading this article, you too will be able to build a cool robot which will help you do tasks around the house!”).
• Body - Take your reader through the various steps you performed to build your application. What obstacles did you encounter? What different approaches did you try? What cool things in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework did you discover which made your life easier? Did you rely on any 3rd party libraries or documentation? Did you have to buy any additional hardware or software, and what vendors do you suggest? Basically, think of the things you would want somebody to tell you if you were building this application from scratch. Include source code wherever possible to illustrate concepts; for a good source code formatter which neatly formats and colorizes your code, visit http://www.carlosag.net/Tools/CodeColorizer/Default.aspx.
• Closing – What did we accomplish in this article? Maybe show some screenshots of your application, or if it’s a hardware article, show some pictures of your robot walking (or whatever hardware you are programming doing its thing). Some of the best Coding4Fun articles also challenge the reader to extend the application by suggesting some new things they can do which extend the basic functionality (e.g. “Now that we’ve build a robot, go download the .NET Speech SDK and program him or her to respond to voice commands!”). Also, if you intend to write another series for this article it’s a good time to plug it and leave the reader wanting more (e.g. “In the next article, we’ll add support for consuming a weather XML Web service to your robot so that it can tell you whether or not it might rain today.”)
• Bio – If you feel comfortable sharing a bit of personal information about yourself, include it here. Do you have a blog? A “day job”? How can people contact you? How long have you been coding for fun, and what types of applications do you like to build?

Legal stuff

Please be careful about the source code, images, or other intellectual property you use when creating your articles. For example, if you use existing source code samples that are available online for use with your application please make sure that these are appropriately licensed for you to use within your application, and subsequently for Microsoft to distribute via MSDN. Unfortunately, Microsoft cannot accept source code which originated as GPL or LGPL. Also, if you use images that are not your own creation please be prepared to provide information about where you got the images.

I’ve written my article. Now what?

Congratulations! After you have written your article and done a few edit passes of your own, send it to code4fun@microsoft.com. We will review the article for:

• Fun/Uniqueness
• Grammar
• Branding
• Syntax
• Messaging
• Content appropriateness

We will not be reviewing the article for technical accuracy. That’s the job of you as the content author. If there are changes we need to make to the article, say beyond grammar or branding issues, we will email you any changes to the article for your approval.

Code Samples

If you have code samples, please upload them to the Channel9 Sandbox and send us a URL. We will then link from your article on Coding4Fun back to the Channel9 Sandbox download location.

Property of Coding4Fun

Please note that any content or code samples you submit to code4fun@microsoft.com will become the property of Coding4Fun, and in turn, the property of Microsoft. This is necessary in order for us to in turn share your submission with the Coding4Fun readership and to be included in upcoming things like the Coding4Fun Resource CD. If you do not wish to relinquish your rights over the code, please do not submit them to us, but rather to another site like CodeProject and send us a link and we’ll feature your article. If your article is already posted in publications let us know as well – you may need to get clearance from the original publication to use your content on Coding4Fun. For example, if you wrote an article for “Hobbyist Developer Monthly” they may prohibit you from also giving that same article content to us.

That’s it!

If you have any questions, email us at: code4fun@microsoft.com. Thank you for coding for fun, and in turn contributing to the coding4fun community!

Appendix A. Article Metadata