Work…

First, let me say that I realize the embedding particular fonts in a web page goes against my general belief that keeping things simple is more effective, elegant, portable, blah, blah, blah. Yes, I still believe that, but I’m tired of the face people make when they are actually presented with a site built on these beliefs. Somewhere there is a middle ground and I am determined to find it, because I’ve been missing it along the way. The balance between simple elegance and the look of true appreciation from the average (read *uninformed* here) web user is out there waiting for me to discover it.

With this new approach to web development in mind, I encountered Typeface.js, a simple script that enables non-standard fonts to be embedded into web pages (see examples here). I say simple because it is way less involved that SiFR, which has become a popular way to “fancy up” text while still allowing it to be read by alternative devices, seen by search engines, and selectable by the user (for copy/paste/portability). The main drawback to SiFR in my mind is that is requires access to a copy of Flash and I am truly that lazy AND cheap.

Looking into it further Typeface.js seemed to be a less involved process so I gave it a try and had it up and running in a matter of minutes. Good stuff. Here’s the low down from my point of view right now:

Pros:

• Doesn’t require a copy of Flash
• Supported browsers include Firefox 1.5+, Safari 2+, and Internet Explorer 6+, and degrades gracefully in unsupported browsers
• Text can be searched, copied, and repurposed
• Draws *pretty* letters with clean, smooth lines for much better looking type, FINALLY
• The code is open and free
• A handy TTF converter is available for download or at the site, that converts True Type Font files for use on the web

Cons:

• It doesn’t support all CSS2 features, but it covers the basics and that’s all I really want anyway
• You must have copyright permission to distribute the fonts you want to use
• Doesn’t taste like chocolate

Wait, what was that about having permission to use the font you want to embed on your site? This is a very important thing to note, because typographers work hard too – hunched over their sketch books and laptops in the dark – making the cool fonts you want to use, and they have to eat. Not to worry, though, there are open fonts available for you to use if you’re in a bind. I like to think the typographers who have made these open available have rich benefactors or sugar daddies (or mamas), or are employed by large companies that give them regular paychecks and allow them to have some free time toward altruistic creativity. Truthfully, I just want to imagine them being well fed so I can use these fonts guilt free.

The MgOpen Collection (Get them here)

• MgOpenCanonica
• MgOpenCosmetica
• MgOpenModata
• MgOpenModerna

Just as a little note, Typeface.js renders text with cleaner lines than the image below displays

On the tail end of the 11th hour I thought I’d blog SOMETHING since this week was actually one of my assigned weeks to blog. There are two big projects I’m finishing up now, the changes to the Distance Gateway (which haven’t launched yet), and the Engage web site which we worked on for Cooperative Extension. The Engage site is now officially in beta as they begin to add some actual content. I’m curious to see what it looks like after it has filled out over a few months.

A while back we had decided to build the site using Expression Engine, a first for me. It seems lately I’ve been building a whole lot of Wordpress sites. Expression Engine is about as easy to work with as Wordpress, but for different reasons – all stemming from the fact that when push comes to shove WP is a blogging platform and EE is a content management system, so it isn’t a straight apples-to-apples camparison between the two. I will say that, in general terms, developing a site in WP or EE takes about the same amount of effort once you’re reasonably familiar with the systems.

I’m planning on writing a few posts around my initial experience with EE while all the questions and fuzzies are still fresh in my head, in the hope that it will straighten a few things out for me, and possibly help someone else out. I will add just one more thing about helping – the EE documentation was consistently the most helpful resource for answering questions.

More on EE to come as I try to collect this last project into something coherent.

Opera, one of the web browsers that has regularly enjoyed a notable amount of marketshare since the 90s (dare I say, since before the turn of the century), has since made a commitment to address accessibility and web standards issues throughout recent years. One of their latest projects is the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. Conceived to be a resource for instructors, students, and working professionals, the project attempts to make available a curriculum that includes a survey of the history of the internet, and an introduction to current, standards-compliant practices in web development.

The project is still underway, but the materials that have been completed are already available on the project site. In the end, they say there will be over 50 articles – all available under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial – Share Alike 2.5 license. I’ve reviewed the content and it is sound. It also attempts to give users access to a community they hope will form around the curriculum by way of a forum. As of right now, activity in the forum has been sparse, but to be fair, it IS new.

Most important, this effort attempts to address common inconsistencies in web development curricula across institutions where course material can sometimes lag a few generations behind due to the rapidly changing nature of the internet. I won’t go into the details of why this happens. There is enough material there for a whole other article.