Saturday, May 31, 2008

Embed fonts on your Web site

Recently, I have been thinking about design and the nature to code safely on the Web. As designers we typically choose to use Web friendly fonts like Verdana, Times New Roman, Arial, and Trebuchet MS.

Designers, however should not let browsers inabilities to carry a vast array of fonts interfere with their designs. Michaelangelo would not have sacrifice the roof of the Sistine Chapel due to lack of a smaller brush, so why is it that Web designers so often sacrifice bandwidth and turn to background images or heavy downloads to convey their message; not to mention the lack of search engine friendliness involved in presenting picures and images instead of text.

I sought out a clear answer on how to embed fonts on a site without the need to sacrife speed or SEO. Back in the late 90's both Netscape and Internet Explorer were fighting grounds for the title of browser reign supreme as such both came out with unusual plugins and font rendering programs, however this was but a mere patch and band aid on the problem as fonts were translated to images solving only the small side of the equation. I don't blame them as SEO wasn't a hot topic in those days and Google was but a silly word some guys thought of to represent their brand.

In today's Web, where Search Engines are the hot club were your name must be on the list, it is crucial to create SE's friendly sites. to do so, the @font-face construct must be utilize.

Here is a simple example courtesy of the css czars at A List Apart:

@font-face {
font-family: "Kimberley";
src: url(http://www.princexml.com/fonts/larabie/ »
kimberle.ttf) format("truetype");
}
h1 { font-family: "Kimberley", sans-serif }

"Those familiar with CSS syntax will recognize the last line. The @font-face construct may not be familiar, however it’s easy to explain: as the “Kimberley” font is requested, the font file is fetched from the specified URL. The syntax is described in the CSS2 specification.

To avoid long lists of @font-face declarations in the style sheet, they can be hidden using @import" like so,

@import url(http://www.princexml.com/fonts/larabie/index.css) all;
h1 { font-family: Goodfish, serif }

The bottom line is that you should not limit yourself or set the bar too low, there is always a way to solve the problem. Problems are easy to come by, but securing an answer is where the intellectual matter comes into play. Don't let the ineptitude of todays' browser interfere with the future, just make sure that you gracefully prepare your site for degredation or for those living in the past. To appreciate the true power behind css, please refer to the Zen Garden project.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Digg This Del.icio.us Slashdot

Friday, January 04, 2008

Albino Whitetail Deer

A colleague sent me this and I thought it interesting enough to share. Here goes:

This was sent by a man in Rhinelander, Wisconsin

A very eventful day around here... A once in many lifetimes experience! I saw this lil' feller run out in front of a car-- thought it was a lost baby goat. Stopped to get it, and WOW!! A real Albino Whitetail Deer. Just hours old, but doing fine. No Momma deer around. Another car nearly hit it in front of me ....

Well, he is THE neatest thing any of us ever saw. And such a 'freak of nature', that only 1 in more than a million are even born. He took his bottle of food, followed us around the house, doing great So, we called the Zoo &Fossil Rim, who were both interested, but we're going to send him to a Rehab farm. Maybe he will make it in captivity somewhere and be appreciated. So rare... Sure wanted to keep him tho. but, not the thing to do. And not LEGAL either. Here are a couple of pictures to show you. He was snow white, pink eyes, ears, nose and hooves. Kids called him POWDER. He was SO small. That is my shoe lying beside him... WOW..how cool is that??


The bottom line is that there are many strange and unusual animals around. This is proof of what mother nature could bring us. In this day and age of climate challenges and changing, it is nice to see that some surprises are still good.

Labels: , , ,

Digg This Del.icio.us Slashdot

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Dell Precision M90 Browser and Image Problems

So I just got my new Dell laptop courtesy of my new employer. These guys really rock. They have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome.

As part of my new deal, my employer gave me card blanche to order which ever laptop I deemed suitable, the only restriction is that it had to come from Dell. Dell really has cornered the small business market. They designed a great site and a great service program that seems to attract the SMB and the consumer market.

Anyways, I love the new pc, it has a 17" widescreen with 2GB of RAM and a 2.33Ghz Dual Core processor. Needless to say, this is a great desktop replacement especially for a Web designer or gamer. I was surprised that after I customized it, the price tag was still reasonable, and trust me I left no feature unselected.

I have only experienced one problem thus far and that is that when I first launched Internet Explorer (IE6 then upgraded to IE7), images seemed blurry, jagged and pixelated. I was worried as I first thought it was the AT&T GSM card doing it, but after much research and thanks to the dellcommunity.com site I learned that this is a microsoft issue. Apparently the IE developers have gone out of their way to customize and best fit Web graphics on very high resolution screens, the problem is that this little layout fix causes the jagged, pixelated images to appear.

You can find the fix on the dellcommunity.com site, but for your convenience I'm pasting it below:

Copy the Text Below into Notepad.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"UseHR"=dword:00000000

Call it antifuzzy.REG

Save it.

Then Double Click it to Import into the Registry
.

The bottom line is that when you encounter a problem, whether PC related or otherwise, it is important not to get frustrated or give up, but instead to turn to the Web for your answers. You will find that others have experience the same or similar situation and many communities are available to help. If you can't find an answer, don't hesitate to join in the forums and post away. You will then have an answer soon enough.

Labels: , ,

Digg This Del.icio.us Slashdot

posted by Death is Endless at 0 Comments Links to this post