Evangelism Reps Training Program/TechBloggingAtMozilla: Difference between revisions

In traditional blogging people will always tell you there needs to be an image in your post to catch people's attention. That works in tech blogging, too, but is not a need-to-have. That said, images are very powerful when you want to show something that might not be possible in the browser people use to read your blog. It is a great "this is what it should look like". For using images there are a few tips:

*'''Link to the resource''' - if you use the in-built WordPress image uploader the image will be linked to the full-size version of the image. If that is wanted, fine. However it makes more sense to link a screenshot to the real resource on the web - people click those much more than text links. Make sure your original images are crisp and big enough to avoid having to link to a "full size" version.

*'''Use absolute image paths''' - your image src should always be a full http URL. The reason is that RSS readers will then display them.  

*'''Have a sensible alternative text''' - this is good for search engines and for accessibility. If the image could not be loaded for any reason you'd still provide the information. Notice that alt="" is not at all the same as title="". It is tempting to give a good title attribute to an image as that is what people see when they hover the image but the alternative content is where your texting skills should go. Titles are nice-to-haves but in most cases not needed at all.

*'''Crop what is not needed''' - there is no point in posting full-screen 1440 pixel images when all you want to show is a form element. Crop your images down to the most needed part. You want to explain with those, not make people have to find things.

*'''Play nice with people's bandwidth''' - people will read our blog on the go, so make sure to optimise the images to the lowest file size possible without making them blurry.