Month: December 2012

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Web Typography

Posted on by Larry_Yudelson

For those who have been designing web sites for centuries, the recent acceptance of web fonts and the possibilities of HTML typography requires some readjustment. We had our hopes for typography dashed around 1998, when the first type embedding specs were proposed and then not accepted in a cross-browser way; we were afraid to get too invested in the new trends. But cross-browser web fonts are real, and more sophisticated forms of typography are coming down the road, through a combination of fancy JavaScript plugins and some nascent new web standards. All of which is to say, it’s time to start looking at examples of best practices, such as those offered in the following link: http://desgr.com/web-typography-multiple-fonts-in-web-design/

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20 Fantastic jQuery Web Type Plugins

Posted on by typemaniac

Larry Yudelson strikes again! This time sending us a link to a whole page of jQuery typography plugins.

First, a few words of explanation:

  1. Today’s typical web page consists of some HTML code (for structure and content) plus some CSS code for styling.
  2. For animation or for user interaction, you might employ Flash, HTML5, Javascript, or some other technique.
  3. Javascript programs can read and respond to a user’s mouse movement, mouse clicks, and keyboard input. Javascript can completely change the appearance and content of a web page by swapping CSS files or completely rewriting a page’s HTML.
  4.  Due to Javascript’s popularity, several collections of Javascript programs have been made available –for free!– to help web designers do cool things with their websites. These collections include MooTools and jQuery.

So the point of the article that Larry has pointed us to is that a whole bunch of typemaniac programmers have been cooking up extensions to the jQuery library, specificially to help you manipulate type on your web pages.

For example . . . Remember using a proportion wheel and vertical camera to resize display type to the same length?

Well, throw away that rubber cement and get with the 21st century! Charlie Park’s “Hatchshow” plugin will equalize all the measures for you — even when you edit the copy.

And that’s only one example of what programmers are doing with web type. For some others, read the article.

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U&lc now available online

Posted on by typemaniac

Guess I won’t have to dig my old U&lc copies out of the warehouse, now that Monotype has scanned the complete run and posted them online.

Starting in 1974, this was the premier typography magazine and all us typemaniacs salivated over every issue. Publication ceased in 1999 but I switched my allegiance to Adobe’s Font & Function (begun 1988) long before U&lc’s demise. Now I look back at it and am both amazed by its brilliance and struck by how dated it can look.

Again, a tip of the Hatlo hat to Larry Yudelson.