One place for web typography, using our collective knowledge for the betterment of typographic style and practice.
I don’t know about you, but it takes me a while for stuff to sink in. When it comes to web typography, notes help.
This section is a place to hash out new ideas and mull over ideas we’ve found elsewhere.
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Below are some bookmarks from the Nice Web Type account at Delicious, mixed with screenshots from our Flickr group.
"What about typeface revisions, metric changes, OpenType support, character set encoding, multiple language support? What about safegards on readability or degradation on hairlines?"
Extensive list of resources from Alessandro Segalini. So much good stuff here.
A Working LibraryBryan Mason at Typekit slogs through font EULAs and is, "surprised at how inconsistent they are." This kind of inconsistency is just one of the challenges facing clean slate proposals like Ascender's OTW. Typekit knows that neither web nor type designers will wait for a clean slate before doing business and using real fonts.
Ascender offers a ground-up strategy for web font licensing. While it is comprehensive, this is definitely not a short-term solution. Jeff Veen notes that it, "requires browser support and changes to all existing fonts."
Mike Davidson: "It's important to examine the following characteristics, in order of importance: compatibility, functionality, legality, ease of use, and hackiness."
Brook Elgie: "The new thing here isn't Typekit, but the tipping point that's been reached of browsers that support @font-face."
"We've been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We've built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM."
Andy Clarke: "Typekit will not only change the way that web designers work with type, it will spark renewed interest among typeface designers in making specific typefaces that work well on screen."
Media Studies at Vassar
Daring Fireball
Jason Santa Maria
Coudal Partners
Stuff and NonsenseThree lists: general @font-face support, support for selected fonts, and a queue of additional foundries whose licensing info hasn't yet been parsed. More great stuff from Ralf Hermann.
From October, Ralf Hermann's succinct preview of text rendering in the soon to be released Firefox (then 3.1, now 3.5). Ralf touches on ligatures, kerning, linking, and file size, in addition to rendering.
Richard Rutter: "Its removal from CSS 2.1 was due to a complete lack of implementation by browsers. Unfortunately this leaves us with a gaping hole regarding font support."
Jackson Wilkinson: "Users are able to read significantly longer line lengths on the web, and it actually increases efficiency and comprehension."
Joe Pemberton at Typophile: "Why is this news? It shouldn't be, except that somewhere back in pre-history when the browser was being forged in the fires of mount Doom it made sense to render content with fonts installed on the client device, not native to the server where the files were hosted. [...] It's time to sell type to designers and brands, and not to every single reader, viewer, and consumer."
Measure, leading, quotes, rhythm, widows, emphasis, scale, and rags. Antonio Carusone: "These details give the designer total control, allowing them to create beautiful and consistent typography in their designs."
Cameron Moll: "1080, which is what I'm taking for a spin with a site right now, is divisible 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15 but not 16. [...] Of course, there's probably a slew of other numbers between 960 and 1080 divisible by many of the widths listed above, so speak your mind about widths, measure, pros, cons, etc."
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