Monotype have added a feature to their fonts.com web font service, giving subscribers the option to host fonts on their own server.
This feature was previously only available to customers who purchased extended Web Fonts Services licensing, but now anyone with a Professional account can opt to self-host. In addition to the traditional font embedding methods subscribers can download a self-hosting kit containing their typefaces in various formats, ready to deploy to their web server.
When Typekit launched in 2009 one of the reservations I expressed about subscription web font services was their reliance on Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), which introduce a potential point of failure. I’ve not had any problems with fonts.com’s CDN, but self-hosting is apparently one of their most requested features, so it’s good to hear that it’s now an option. MyFonts already allow customers to self-host their web fonts, and it will be interesting to see if other font venders follow suit.
While I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for my last Amazon shipment to arrive I asked my studio mate if he had any design theory books I could borrow. “Aha! I’ve got just the thing”, he said (or words to that effect) and plucked a copy of Kenneth Fitzgerald’s Volume from his bookshelf. The author’s name didn’t ring any bells, but the book’s back cover promised a survey of “the discipline of graphic design in context with the parallel creative fields of contemporary music and art”. Since I love graphic design, music and art, I figured I was on to a good thing.
Anyone familiar with CSS will have encountered the concept of specificity, a nifty mechanism that allows web browsers to resolve conflicts between CSS declarations. Specificity is an essential component of the CSS cascade, and most of time it works in predictable ways which make your job simpler. However if you get too specific with your CSS selectors you might be making your stylesheets more complex than they need to be.
Donald A. Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things frequently pops up on lists of “must read” design books, but I’ve somehow managed to avoid reading it until now. I finally included the book in my last Amazon order, and now I wish I hadn’t waited so long to get my hands on a copy, because it really is a classic that deserves all the praise that’s been heaped on it.
The Design of Everyday Things was first published in 1988 under the title The Psychology of Everyday Things, and is aimed at anyone involved in the design process, regardless of which field they work in. Norman’s background is in cognitive science, and in the book he explores the psychology of everyday objects, making a persuasive argument for the importance of a user-centered approach to design. After reading The Design of Everyday Things you will never look at a tap, light switch, stove top, or telephone the same way again (and I guarantee you’ll learn a thing or two about the layout of your computer keyboard!)
Remember when websites came with disclaimers listing their minimum viewing requirements, and shooed away anyone who didn’t make the grade? “This website is best viewed in Netscape Navigator” visitors would be advised, or “View this site in Internet Explorer at 800×600 resolution”. Those were the bad old days, and I would like to believe that as a community we have learned our lesson and moved on, embracing graceful degradation and progressive enhancement as alternatives to the “my way or the highway” mentality.
This morning I visited a website that caused me to wonder if we’ve come so far after all. I was looking forward to experiencing the site’s typography, which I’d been informed was exemplary, and was surprised when my browser served up fallback system fonts rather than the embedded web fonts I was expecting. A warning message in the masthead informed me that if the fonts looked “kind of weird” I should switch to Chrome or Safari.
One of the most frustrating aspects of project management is dealing with “scope creep”, also known as “feature creep” or “requirement creep”. These ominous sounding terms refer to a project’s scope being changed after work is already underway. This phenomenon can impact on the project’s schedule, cost and complexity.
Because an individual change may only have a small impact on the overall project, scope creep can be hard to spot at first. It usually begins with a seemingly innocuous request from your client:
I know that development of our website is already underway, but we’ve decided that we need to have a mailing list signup form on the homepage. Hope that’s not a bother.
If you acquiesce to your client’s wishes without re-quoting the job, then you’ve allowed scope creep to set in. Before you know it the “small” changes are starting to mount up, and the project is turning into a much larger job than you anticipated.
Last year I created a port of the Monokai syntax highlighting theme for phpDesigner and posted it in the phpDesigner forums, but I think it deserves a proper home so I’m archiving it here on Pixel Acres.
Over the years I have streamlined the way I write and structure CSS to make my workflow more efficient. Here are a few tips I have picked up along the way.
For a number of years I have used Campaign Monitor to provide email marketing services to my clients, and I’ve always gotten a kick from seeing how subscribers interact with my client’s emails. When sending out a large campaign it is satisfying to watch the ‘views’ and ‘clicks’ metrics climb higher as subscribers open the email and click links within the newsletter.
I must not be the only person who enjoys these kind of real-time statistics, because Campaign Monitor have just launched a new reporting feature they call Worldview, which is designed to give instantaneous feedback about your subscribers.
When I first cut my teeth as a web designer in the late 1990s, the web industry was mired in the first round of the “browser wars”, with Netscape Navigator pitted against Internet Explorer for market dominance. Netscape and Microsoft tried to outdo each other by enhancing their web browser with proprietary features and HTML elements that were unavailable in their competitor’s product. For developers wanting to build complex DHTML websites that worked in both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer the only option was to fork their code, maintaining an entirely separate code base for each browser, and essentially doubling their workload.
It was in this context that Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash, and before that FutureSplash) first came to prominence. The Flash plugin worked identically in all web browsers, offering a way free from the browser wars and liberating developers from the tit-for-tat power struggle between Netscape and Microsoft. Build once, view anywhere. Bliss! Not only that, Flash (along with its sibling Shockwave) brought rich interactive animations to the web, a temptation that was too great for web designers to ignore.
