« December 2002 Entries »

Work and Play

You may notice the now–default white typeface.

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InDesign and Type

I have been playing with Adobe’s InDesign lately, and I’m really enjoying this program. Quark Express has always been the software of choice for print design, so Adobe’s entry into the market is widely under-used. I never got into Quark, mainly due to not having it, so I’ve been free to experiment without the shackles of familiarity confining me and I like what I see.

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The Case for Copyright

As reported today by Wired News, Creative Commons has released the first version of their licensing project. The astute reader may have assumed due to the Eldred vs. Ashcroft support on the right-hand column of this very web site that I don’t support excessive copyright. The following should confirm that assumption.

Creative Commons is offering a set of canned licenses for creative work, with an emphasis on allowing shared work while retaining copyright. Thus, a writer who has spent time putting together an article on Fair Trade Coffee is able to publish it to the web and allow individuals to save a copy, while licensing it for usage in a magazine or other publication to make a profit.

There’s no paradox here; it’s all a perfectly legitimate application of international copyright law. In fact, I’d go so far as to state it’s more legitimate than large business funding copyright law extensions ad infinitum to hold on to their so-called intellectual property. (alluded example: see white “(e)” link to the right)

The great thing about Creative Commons’ effort is that the work has already been done — they have written many individual licenses and give you the option to mix and match. For example, you may choose to hold on to commercial rights while allowing individuals to create derivative work. Or you might decide to release your work to the public domain. The supporting licenses are painstakingly detailed in the current fashion of legalese, but explained in plain English in terms that can’t be mistaken.

While the world becomes increasingly hostile to even parody and fair use, it’s refreshing to think that common sense options exist to the all-or-nothing approach of big business. I support the cause, and hereby license this site and all works contained therein under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 license to show it.

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a Pocket full of Rye

In a complete surprise move to even myself, I threw together a secondary publication this week that I’m soft launching.

a Pocket full of Rye is a new weblog that I hope to publish monthly. I would like to say my schedule will be more frequent than that, but I know myself: I’m being realistic when saying it’s monthly.

Inspired by the greats like Fireland and Textism, it will be a collection of short stories, essays and writings on more or less whatever I feel like at the time. I aim to collect the writing and self–publish at some point far off in the future, but that’s long long long term planning, so don’t get any hopes up.

There will be more work on it over the holidays, and I’ll find some way of linking the latest version here. For now, go and take a look at the first edition. Feedback is welcome.

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Effects of CSS-Based Design

When one decides to scrap the traditional hacks and kludges in creating an HTML page, and opts to instead format in CSS, the effects can be rather dramatic.

A certain Mr. Z. linked an interesting tool last night, the GetContentSize analysis utility. Stripping all extraneous CSS and Javascript, it will report the signal to noise ratio of your HTML.

mezzoblue, for example, sits at about 45% (which will inevitably change as new articles get posted and old ones removed), while Zeldman is a higher 60%. Both are CSS–only layouts that don’t use table hacks. Let’s look at a few examples of old–school HTML tabling to compare.

As tipped off in September, Microsoft redesigned using a plethora of FONT tags and insanely poor code which hasn’t been changed in the least as of yet. The result is a lofty 8.63% content level which should surprise no one. Seemingly for the benefit of a small handful of 3.x browser users (who view the web as a great big broken mess anyway), presentation code and content are carelessly intertwined, when graceful alternatives exist that were, in fact, developed in part by Microsoft themselves.

Not many of the other big players fare better. Amazon? 11.32%. Yahoo? 15.93%. AOL? 8.0%. IBM? 7.24%.

The question begs itself: so what? Why do these numbers matter? On their own, of course, they mean nothing. But they’re telling of an underlying difference in the way these sites are coded.

CSS–based design is intended to work on any browser that supports valid W3C guidelines. When done right, an external file (or two, or more) control the appearance of the entire site. This means that each new page load happens quicker since the display code is cached. A redesign can potentially be done without touching any of the content files which makes for faster turn–around time. The only possible disadvantage is that anything 4.x and back chokes on most CSS beyond simple text formatting. Which means roughly 6 or 7 percent of the market.

And that’s the key, that small niche. These sites willingly increase load times, add cost to development time, and use 5 or 6 year old standards to deliver today’s web to people who can’t or won’t upgrade to newer technology. That’s why we’re seeing ten percent content in their HTML, because someone in marketing has decided that they can’t risk losing that share.

This is an issue that won’t die soon. Anyone in the development business who understands it willl advocate the use of CSS. In fact, most personal sites and web logs are going this way, and those using the older browsers have been seeing upgrade messages for a while now when they happen to hit these sites. This will only continue, as more and more business and content-based sites come around. Wired was the first major player to move in this direction with its recent redesign. Wired is in an excellent position to do this, since their focus is on the cutting edge. It’s a step in the right direction, and now other developers have a mainstream site to reference when making proposals. The revolution has been slow to kick in, but it has started, it’s happening, and it will continue.

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Origins of Verdana/Tahoma

I’ve noticed the similarities between the Tahoma and Verdana typefaces all along. Despite knowing it’s usually a bad practice, I have never felt remorse in using both on a single piece of work.

Verdana is the wide font, Tahoma is the tight font. That’s how I distinguished them in my mind. It’s never a good idea to bump Tahoma’s tracking to something lower than the default, I’ve found through trial and error. Verdana has a bit of room to maneuver; it has always just felt wider.

I’ve long known the history of Verdana — commissioned by Microsoft, designed by Matthew Carter (formerly of BitStream) specifically for on–screen use, it is perhaps the most web–friendly font there is due to its strong design and high penetration of the market.

Tahoma was a different matter. I knew it was commonly distributed with Microsoft Office, so I assumed it was another Vincent Connare creation. Probably due to lack of trying, I never found a good answer to my curiosity.

Fast forward to today. I got curious enough to load up Photoshop and compare Verdana to Tahoma, side by side. The results? They’re almost the exact same font, distinguished just about solely by their hinting! The results didn’t surprise me in the least; the fact that this has gone completely unnoticed for so long by myself did.

In the image below, the two are presented with exactly the same options set: 30px text, a tracking value of 10, and anti–aliasing set to strong. Notice the individual character shapes, compare the stems and bowls, and it becomes pretty obvious the letter-spacing is the only differentiating feature between the two. Verdana is, in fact, slightly wider than Tahoma as well. I initially assumed this was solely due to the hinting, but upon closer inspection the individual letter–forms are a bit wider.

A quick Google search confirmed what my eyes were telling me — Verdana was created by modifying Tahoma. This may not be news to any of you, but it sure is to me.

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The power of “Transform Each”

It seems to me that Adobe Illustrator is one of those programs that everyone knows a little bit about, but not many consider themselves experts on. Often eclipsed by its big brother Photoshop, it packs in a heck of a lot of great features that you don’t find elsewhere.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (0) | posted to Design