101 Ways To Read Slate
... and counting.
Editor's Note, Jan. 2002: Much of this article is out of date following a recent redesign. Now we've made it much easier to read Slate in whatever form you want. Just use the Output Options menu (from the list on the left side of any Slate page), from which you can get a printable version of the magazine, subscribe to our e-mail deliveries, download articles as an eBook for the Microsoft Reader, or get Slate onto your handheld computer. Better yet, do all of the above (except sign up for e-mails) at Build Your Own Slate, a handy all-in-one tool.
Well, maybe not 101, but we offer Slate in myriad forms, and we wanted to make sure you are aware of all of them.
1. The obvious way of reading Slate is to go to www.slate.com or www.slate.msn.com and read it online. We don't discourage this at all! We do find this method works best if, along with the outstanding articles, you also take the opportunity to click all the advertisements and buy the products and services they offer.
In most browsers, you can right-click slate.com or slate.msn.com and add Slate to your Favorites or Bookmarks. Do it now, please, before you forget. You can also make a Favorite or Bookmark for regular Slate departments and go straight to the latest article in that department.
2. At http://slate.msn.com/eBook/htmlEbook.htm, you will find every article in the current Table of Contents (roughly a week's worth), formatted into a single (very long) all-text Web page. This page is updated every day at about 11:30 a.m. Go ahead, click the link and have a look. What can you do with this wonderful page? To start, you can make it a Favorite or a Bookmark, or put a shortcut on your desktop, which we recommend that you do right away. (Just right-click on the link, in most cases.) Then you can …
• Use it to read Slate off-line. Just call up the page and save it to your hard drive or a floppy. Although it is one long page, there is a Table of Contents with links to individual articles, so no maniacal scrolling is required. If you want to get fancy, you can make this page a Favorite, approve it for off-line reading, and then set up a daily synchronization for 12:30 p.m., about an hour after we post each day's updated version. That way, you'll always have a complete and current Slate on your machine. (How do you do all this? See your browser's Help for details. It's not as hard as it sounds. We get it right almost half the time.)
• Download this file to your palmtop or tablet device, either manually whenever you need it or through an automatic scheduled download. How? Oh, just like any other Web page. Need we say more? You're the one who bought the thing. (Don't try to sync this file using AvantGo, which is usually terrific but uncooperative in this case.)
• Print it out, although there are better ways to print out Slate articles (see below).
3. At http://slate.msn.com/ebook/slate.lit is another daily-updated file of everything in Slate for the past seven days. This one, though, is in Microsoft's eBook format, Microsoft Reader with ClearType. With this file you can …
• Read Slate on your Pocket PC (any palmtop using the latest version of Microsoft's software). Using recent versions of Windows and Internet Explorer (meaning, "if you happen to use Windows and Internet Explorer," not "you'd better be using Windows and Internet Explorer"), you can make this Web address a Mobile Favorite (that's just a sub-folder of your Favorites folder), set it up for off-line reading and daily synchronization with your desktop as described—though not, actually, explained—in Item 2 above, and then the latest version will be loaded automatically whenever you sync your Pocket PC with your desktop. Or, of course, you can just download the file and drag-and-drop it to your Mobile Device like a normal person.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for the Washington Post and the founding editor of Slate.