Readable Web » Readability

WOFF Support In Chrome Starts Up

Richard Fink — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:45:00 +0000

WOFF web fonts are now live in Version 6 Beta of Chrome for Win XP, Win 7, and MAC OS X, as well.

Days away? A week away?

Version 6 Beta seems pretty stable.

A simple test page.

Here is an image of what you should see in any browser if WOFF support is there:

TypeCon 2010: A New Birth Of Type

Richard Fink — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:10:59 +0000

As good as digital gets there is still no replacement for face-to-face. Never will be. The only thing that a human really understands is other humans. Facial expression, tone of voice, body language – the real people deal – there’s just no way to get that from afar. Technology allows us to adopt a persona in our communications, and the only way past that is to be there.
Ya gotta get out of the office.

The Past Has Passed

It’s amazing how much has changed since last year. Here at TypeCon, there is a new mood: a growing acceptance that the future of fonts is onscreen. A feeling of relief is in the air. Decisions have been made. Last night, in a keynote kick-off, Roger Black of the Font Bureau focused on screen fonts and, with optimism, stated the obvious – that the font industry has to rethink the business of type because there is no going back. Roger was understandably a little light on details but the last slide in his accompanying Powerpoint demo was a price: “99 Cents”

News And Links

Webtype

Webtype, a partnership between Font Bureau and Ascender Corp, has finally launched. Without even looking, I know the fonts look good. Webtype has a blog, too. See: New Web Font Service Launched by Partnership of Experts
FinkTip: Stop with the “we are the experts” stuff. Nobody cares. Self-congratulatory mumbo doesn’t convince anybody of anything. (Unless you’re trying to convince yourself, which is really what sales copy like that is about.) Pronouncements from on high about your own expertise doesn’t work onscreen. It only undermines the effort.
And if I see from anybody, “use fonts legally” as marketing pitch, I’m going to scream. I’m screaming right now. You might as well hang a sign that says, “Hack me, please!” And how many potential customers, pray tell, are even going to understand what you’re talking about? This is just the reality. Why not be explicit and tell customers that if they don’t do business with you, they could potentially get sued? That would be charming, eh? Either get into it, in detail, or cut the FUD. It just detracts.

Fontfonter

Some guys from Fontshop have put together a web font preview site called FontFonter which lets you see their fonts as applied to external sites. Conspicuously missing is support for Internet Explorer. I don’t think it’s a technical issue but I could be wrong. I have noticed an ideological bias – unstated, but certainly there – against Internet Explorer at Fontshop. I don’t know if it’s a beef with Microsoft in general, or what.
I’ll be trying to get to the bottom of it and will report. [Update: see report that follows]

FinkRetract: (Concerning the deleted above) I met up with Stephen Coles and Ivo Gabrowitsch of Fontshop today and was assured that there is no bias against IE and that Fontfonter’s lack of support for IE is purely technical. They just can’t make the font swap-out work in IE. And they are quite glad that Microsoft held the line and helped bring about WOFF so no biases there, either. Love is in the air. My bad for reading into things.

Typecon Pics On Facebook

I’ve been trying to get a handle on my new Canon Rebel X4 camera – and dammit I’m going to do it no matter how long it takes – and have been posting pics on Readable Web’s Facebook Page. Check it out. You might be tagged!

Good Web Fonts

Educator Laura Franz – who I met last night – has put together a side-by-side comparison site for body fonts called Good Web Fonts. Great idea. Check it out.

The Web Font Awards – A Contest

Monotype Imaging will be sponsoring a web fonts contest. The site is called Web Font Awards. Brand new. No details as yet. Kudos to Monotype for this idea. The world holds one surprise after another. Now how do we get more web designers to attend a conference like this? Two hour Web Font “panels” are fine but in the world Roger Black is describing, fonts on the web are the main event with two hour panels on print fonts.

Microsoft WOFFles On SVG Web Fonts In IE9

Richard Fink — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:56:11 +0000

In a post on the IE Blog, the following excuse was given for not supporting SVG Fonts:

“As IE9 has implemented more of the standards that developers use and value, IE9’s Acid3 score has continued to rise. The remaining points involve two particular technologies (SVG Fonts and SMIL animation of SVG) that are in transition.

Support for SVG Fonts in the web development and font communities has been declining for some time. There’s already been discussion without objection of dropping SVG fonts from the Acid3 test. The community has put forth a proposal in the SVG Working Group to give SVG Fonts optional status.

Instead, developers can use the Web Open Font Format (WOFF, supported in IE9 Platform Preview 3 as well as other browsers) for both HTML and SVG content. It works well in conjunction with the CSS3 Fonts module and has broad support from leading font vendors (e.g. here, “a majority of font makers have already settled on WOFF or services like Typekit as their format of choice”). WOFF fonts are a better long-term solution for many reasons discussed previously.

Here is my reply as it appeared in the comments:

I find this post’s explanation for tossing SVG Fonts under the bus completely unpersuasive. I don’t know what to make of it. You’ve written nothing about the technical merits or the lack thereof of SVG Fonts at all. Just excusy dance-arounds.

“Support for SVG Fonts in the web development and font communities has been declining for some time.“

To what kind of “support” are you referring? Actual implementations or enthusiasm about the technology? If the latter, who’s enthusiasm has waned?

Did somebody do a poll?

Chrome, Safari, and Opera all have running code for SVG Fonts.

“There’s already been discussion without objection of dropping SVG fonts from the Acid3 test. The community has put forth a proposal in the SVG Working Group to give SVG Fonts optional status.“

First, I object. So now you have an objection.

Second, so what? Are you in favor of SVG Fonts or not? Does it give developers valuable options that they would not otherwise have, or not?

“Instead, developers can use the Web Open Font Format (WOFF, supported in IE9 Platform Preview 3 as well as other browsers) for both HTML and SVG content.“

Huh? Excuse me for being a little in the dark here, but could you be specific about where and how WOFF – which is a wrapped TTF or OTF file and works no differently than the system installed web-safe fonts – can be manipulated via script in the way SVG fonts can be? Are you saying WOFF is *the same* as SVG Fonts?

“It works well in conjunction with the CSS3 Fonts module and has broad support from leading font vendors (e.g. here, “a majority of font makers have already settled on WOFF or services like Typekit as their format of choice”).“

This has the standards process backwards and it isn’t even true. If it’s true, prove it.

“WOFF fonts are a better long-term solution for many reasons“

Says you. What are the differences, why are you declining to suport SVG Fonts, *that* is the point.

Some elaboration would be appreciated.

Regards,

Rich

I think everybody deserves a truthful and rational explanation for any decision that effects digital publishing as profoundly as the display of fonts. From any browser maker. And especially from Microsoft who writes so many rules of the game.
Whatever disagreements there may be between some font producers and myself there is no disagreement on this: type is important, it’s fundamental. If questions are raised and the answer is, simply, “Suck it up. This is what we’ve decided to do.”, that may or may not be OK – it depends upon what we’re talking about – but I’d rather hear that, than jive posing as reason supported by wishes presented as facts.

What’s WOFF Got To Do With It?

Tina Turner sang that, right? What’s WOFF but a second hand emotion…♫♪♫♫
Anyway, to end, here’s an example of SVG fonts at work. Viewable in Opera, Chrome, and Safari:
http://devfiles.myopera.com/articles/593/webfonts_in_svg.svg

Fixing Web Fonts, A Case Study

Richard Fink — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:07:49 +0000

Zoe Gillenwater writes about web design, especially Cascading Style Sheets. She’ll be speaking at John Allsopp’s Web Directions USA in Atlanta on Sept 21 in a presentation titled Efficient and Effective Design With CSS3.
A few months ago she announced a new book in the works called Stunning CSS3. I went to the book’s dedicated page to have a look.
Web fonts were being used. But in IE I didn’t like the way they looked at all:

Recreation of the page here.

The fonts used were Fertigo and Museo by Jos Buivenga.

Here’s what I did to fix:

1) I downloaded the fonts fresh. (They are available only in OTF format. Why? I don’t know. One would think that – as a promotional giveaway – making sure the fonts look good in every browser would be important. And at least one font designer – Peter Bilak at Typotheque – seems to grasp this reality. Good looking font rendering requires what it requires. And telling users of IE 6 through 8 to go take a hike is not a nice or smart thing to do. Bad for business.)

2) I subsetted the fonts (deleting unnecessary characters) to match the original files I got from Zoe’s site.

3) I converted the OTF files to TTF using the Font Squirrel Generator with auto-hinting enabled.

4) I re-did the TTF to EOT conversions using EOTFAST to get a compressed file. (Smaller files, quicker page load.)

Note: Auto-hinting is a hit-and-miss proposition – it works great for some fonts, not so well for others. But it worked very nicely for Museo and Fertigo, so I sent Zoe the improved fonts.
Here’s the result:

Recreation of the page here.

This was all one-click stuff that anybody can do. The worst that could happen is that the TTF wouldn’t look any better than what you had before. Was it worth the time spent? Absolutely.

Looks Bad Delivered By Typekit, Too

On Jos Buivenga’s site, I noticed that Typekit was listed as a source for Museo so I went and took a look there, too. Unfortunately, it looked as scraggly as the original on Zoe’s site:

Now, one of the arguments I’ve heard in favor of FHOS (Font Hosting and Obfuscation Services) is that they relieve web authors of the burden of taking different browsers into account. Well, what’s happening here? What’s up with this?

Don’t Deny What’s In Front Of Your Face

Recently, in a thread on Typophile, font designer Karsten “Cool Hand” Luecke wanted a piece of me for, according to him, putting ideas in people’s heads, for the notion that there are lots of fonts that look like crap onscreen. Fonts that need fixing. Fonts that could use improvement. It seems I’m an instigator for suggesting that web designers take matters into their own hands and mash, slash, and smack the font around until it looks right. Well, I plead guilty as charged. Please excuse me for suggesting that upholding some minimum level of aesthetic quality might be a good thing for users, web authors, and font designers alike.

Incidentally, Zoe G is using the web font Nadia from the free font service Kernest on her blog, and it looks very very good across the whole browser spectrum. (See if you can spot it.)

So here we have one case of free delivering better than paid, and a DIY derivative performing better than what could be purchased. (The single “normal” weight of Museo is free, the rest of the family you pay for.)

Make of this what you will.

E-Book Publishers Go Delusional

Richard Fink — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:01:36 +0000

Book publishers seem lately like a group of prep-school kids who’ve gotten into an altercation with a bunch of gang-bangers on their way home. Pepper spray versus automatic weapons. Yeesh.

An article today in the NYTimes, E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text, tells of publishers once again revisiting the fantasy land of “multimedia”. This latest phase, as publishers move along the Five Stages Of Grief, is bargaining:

“Maybe if we provide books with a web-like experience, we can save our jobs!”

Instead of concentrating on real problems and opportunities publishers pour resources into desperate attempts to stay relevant with a bad imitation of the web.

Newsflash: Saving your job may be a great motivator but it is not a source of opportunity. (Personally, all this reminds me of the Fashion Industry circa 1988 as the last dominoes in the migration of apparel manufacturing to low wage nations began to fall with startling speed.
Google “auto workers, Detroit” for more perspective.)

Dream On

So now publishers are coming up with “enhanced” books, “amplified” books, and “enriched” books.
No, don’t get involved. Just keep walking and call 911, it’s all you can do.

In providing this web-like experience, the operative word is “like”, as in pale imitation. No book editor on earth can “clear” enough copyrighted material to remotely come close to the depth of information I can get on the web, for free, on any facet of any book.
Look, I know they’re desperate. And as a refugee from a dead industry myself, I understand. But what world are they living in?

Aren’t any of these people aware of what happened to Microsoft Encarta?

I had heard about the plans for an “amplified” book from Penguin’s Molly Barton at the Future Of Reading Conference at RIT. The crowd at the conference was largely academic, with some librarians and publishing insiders sprinkled in. Yet even an older, relatively staid audience like that knew immediately the idea was lame.

Font designer Gary Munch deadpanned, “Uh, didn’t they try that before in the nineties?”. Such was the general reaction. To top it off, Barton made a snide comment – with pride, too – about Penguin NOT hiring web savvy “kids” to work on their e-book efforts. This raised eyebrows all around, too. Looks deceive. Beware the librarians.

We publishing professionals know best, was the message. Big mistake.

To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

Richard Fink — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:43:52 +0000

Decisions, decisions.

Today my wife the doctoral candidate asked my advice on whether to buy a book she needed as a P-Book or the Kindle edition. (We have the Kindle DX.)

The name of the book is The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. (Strangely, I remembered both the book and the author’s name. I think I might have read it a long time ago during my history-of-technology phase.)

Anyway, here were the considerations:

Delivery: Kindle is instant versus having to wait (and pay extra) for the P-Book.

Price: $9.99 for the Kindle versus $13.80 plus shipping for the P-Book.

Payment Method: Both instant – quickpay or autopay or one-click or whatever Amazon is calling it.

Intrinsic Quality: Print is print is print. Expectations will be met. There will be a Table Of Contents, there will be an Index. You can flip through it. However, there’s no equivalent to a “flip through” on the Kindle. And Kindle books can vary in quality depending upon how the digital file is created. This usually means problems navigating through the book. How widespread these problems are with Kindle books produced by commercial houses, I don’t know. But the fear flashed through my mind – and that’s a problem for both Amazon and publishers of titles for the Kindle. I wonder what the return policy is.

Miscellaneous Pros For the P-Book: You can resell it. You can loan it to a friend who doesn’t have a Kindle. It’s just as easy to scan and OCR parts of it as it is to try and copy and paste from the Kindle. (Can that even be done? …gotta work on my Kindle-skills.)

Miscellaneous Pros For the Kindle Edition: Nothing to carry, it travels with the device. It also travels with the iPad via the Kindle app. Is there a desktop version of the Kindle app? I don’t know.

Bottom Line: This book is a must-have, not discretionary. (The local library could, in this instance, be an option since the course requiring it won’t last forever.)
But on the logic of, “Well, ten bucks more or less isn’t going to break me”, the Kindle edition won. Later today, I’ll check out the quality issues and report back.

Transitions, transitions.

[ UPDATE: A Few Hours After First Post ]

The book indeed has a table of contents. However, when you first “open” the book on the Kindle, for some reason it jumps to the Preface, not the TOC. Don’t see much logic in that. Plus, who reads the damned Preface anyway. I know the author is grateful to their family, to God, and to that first-grade teacher who put them on the path to authorship. There should be a “Start Reading” option that takes you straight to the meat. Or, start with the TOC, for heaven’s sake. But anyway….

Part of the reason for this post was to display, unashamedly, my own ignorance of what’s up with Kindle books. From what I can see, the best thing about the Kindle is the iPad Kindle app. Much, much more usable. And in Naples, Florida, where I live, it’s too damned hot in the sun, anyway.
In a comment on this post, Joe Golton of FilterJoe, who’s not ignorant says:

“Richard – You’ve already pulled the trigger on this one but there’s a few things that would be helpful for you to know before purchasing any more books from the Kindle store:

1) There IS a way to flip through a book, but only if the book is formatted with “waypoints.” Waypoints are the little dots you see at the bottom of the Kindle’s screen for books that have them. Look at the Kindle DX User’s Guide for an example. Just flick the controller to the right (or left) flip forward (or backward) through the book chapter by chapter.

2) You can usually download a sample to see if the book has Table of Contents and waypoints enabled. You will want to do this for any book that has chapters, to see if it is set up to take full advantage of the Kindle formatting.

3) Nonetheless – a sample will usually only show you the first 5% or so of a book. So you may not get to preview whether graphs were done correctly.

The Nook from Barnes and Noble has the advantage of allowing you to browse the entire book while you are in the Barnes and Noble store. The Nook also has another “flip through the book” option – a slider that can be used on the touchpad to jump to different parts of the book.”

So there you have it. And me, too.

Two Joes On The State Of E-Books

Richard Fink — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:19:23 +0000

Everybody knows that books are special. Books require special “formatting”. And special E-Readers, of course, which will – via small nasal attachments – give you that special new book smell, too. (Don’t believe it? It’s already available as an aerosol.)

Just remember that what “everybody knows” is useless information. And upon close inspection, usually flat-out wrong or at least outdated.

From Joe Clark:

I’ve been re-reading Joe Clark’s article Web Standards For E-Books on AListApart and you should, too.
Other posts of interest would be these, on Joe C’s blog:
Travis J. Nichols’ ‘Ugly Stick’
Retraining Readers Of An Industry Organ

From Joe Golton:

Joe Golton’s blog is called “Filter Joe” and his passion is filtering information – finding ways to tame the information beast and get what you need without the crap. Joe’s latest post is a hands-on report about just what kinds of information can be viewed without hassle on the Kindle.
Can You Read Anything On The Kindle? …Almost, With Google Reader

Web Font Frolic In Ireland

Richard Fink — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:25:59 +0000

The Association Typographique Internationale (ATYPI) is holding it’s annual conference in Dublin, Ireland this year. I’ll be giving a talk on web font formats titled Destination Web on the second day of the conference during its two-day Pre-Face warm-up. The full schedule was posted today.

Hey Mommy, Look At Me!

I’m quite excited to be in the same room, speaking from the same stage as some very accomplished people. People like designers Jon Tan and Richard Rutter of Fontdeck; Brian Mason and Ryan Carver – co-founders of Typekit (along with Jeffrey Veen); Kevin Larson of Microsoft; Miguel Sousa of Adobe; FontLab gurus Ted Harrison and Adam Twardoch, and font designer Tim Ahrens – just to name some names that I know.

They say that working with people who are better than you makes you better – and it’s true. So even though they’ll only to get to work with me for a few days, I’m expecting to see some sharp improvements from all of these fellows.

E-Book Formats: The Mad Scramble

Richard Fink — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:37:40 +0000

I haven’t been reporting much on developments in the e-reader biz lately. Simple reason: I can’t keep up and I don’t think it pays at this point to even try. I’m enjoying the shake out, though.

The mad scramble is being driven by two factors:
1) Screen technology has gone mobile in a big way – with the Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Android, and so forth and so on.
All the stuff you could possibly have the time to read can now travel with you. And if that isn’t enough, even more stuff you’ll never ever have the time to read can be sent wirelessly to you.
2) These screens do provide a satisfying reading experience. And they are getting better all the time.

The New iPhone’s “Retina” Display

I checked out the new iPhone with it’s ultra-sharp Retina display the other day and it was amazing, really. As an iPhone user, I was very skeptical about it being worth the hassle and expense of an upgrade, but to these tired old eyes, it definitely is. I’ve simply never seen a display with text as crisp and sharp at small sizes as I saw on the new iPhone. I did a side-by-side comparison with my current phone and all I could say was, “Wow”. The next day I was using my wife’s iPad for something and I couldn’t help but try to imagine what it would be like if the iPad had the same quality screen as the new iPhone. Wow++. Only a matter of time, I suppose.

E-Reader? Got One. It’s Called A Browser.

And so, everybody’s scrambling to establish themselves as the dominant platform or format or application, or something or other for the burgeoning market for “books onscreen”.

Here’s a simple fact that, for me, stands out: All day long I read from an application called a browser. You’ve heard of them, right? Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome – those guys. But yet, when it comes to paper books that have been ported onscreen, I’m being asked to use some other application called an E-Reader.

Why? What’s wrong with this picture? Are the words in a paper book different than the words on a blog?

As you ponder this question, check out the free browser-based Ibis Reader. (Yes, for the iPhone/iPad it’s an app. A matter of screen real-estate, I suppose. When will mobile Safari support full-screen mode?)

I’m also keeping an eye on Blio, new e-publishing software that seems to be a little different from the rest of the pack, but we’ll see when it soon debuts.

Wanna e-publish? Jeffrey Zeldman posted a nice, brief roundup with some juicy links a couple of days ago.

FontCONF In Minneapolis/St. Paul

Richard Fink — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:53:43 +0000

It’s Tomorrow, And Free. Please come.

If you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and you’re into design, web design, web fonts, fonts, typography, or anything at all like the forementioned, please come to FontCONF tomorrow, Saturday, June 19th at:
CoCo – Coworking and Collaborative Space
213 4th St E., St Paul, MN

FontCONF

Organized by Garrick Van Buren of the font service and download site Kernest, a great time is guaranteed for all.

In the morning, font designer Chank Deisel will be leading a session where an entire font will be constructed as a collaborative effort. As part of a team, I’ll also be facilitating a session in the afternoon. There will be surprises. Fun. Laughter and learning.

Greatly looking forward to it. Hope you can come.

Addendum To Conference:

As some readers of this blog know, an article I wrote about fonts on the web was published on AlistApart Magazine about ten days ago. Unfortunately, Bill Davis of font producer Ascender Corp, took issue with some of the things I wrote about Ascender’s new web font services.

As it turned out, Bill flew in from Chicago to a attend FontCONF, and I’m sorry to report that all the bad blood boiled over, things got completely out of hand, and there was a brawl. Luckily, someone had a camera and captured the incident:

Davis and Fink square off with scornful laughter, each confident of victory.

Witneses to this unfortunate confrontation included font designers Mark Simonson, Stu Sandler, and Chank Deisel. However, after a delicious dinner at a nearby steak house in St. Paul, both men declined to press charges.