Real fonts on the web: House Industries supports WOFF format.

…a font format for the Web that satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries. … WOFF offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues, and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType).

WOFF has the support of a wide spectrum of the type community; from peers such as Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, etc., and larger foundries such as Linotype and Monotype. Today it has also gained the support of Mozilla in the their release of Firefox 3.6 (Mozilla has a full list of designers and foundries that support WOFF on that page). We hope and expect that WOFF will quickly gain support in other major browsers as we support, endorse and expect to license our library for use on the Web in the WOFF format in the future.

Read more

• The Problem: We have the fonts, we have the CSS and the workaround for IE. What we don’t have is beautiful, reliable, consistent cross-platform rendering of real fonts like Gotham, Franklin, Garamond, etc. — 29 October 2009
• Web Fonts and Standards: How real fonts work on the web via standard CSS. Making it work in IE. The licensing hurdle. Rise of the middlemen and their effect on the adoption of font embedding standards. — 17 August
• Web Fonts Now, for Real: David Berlow of The Font Bureau publishes a proposal for a permissions table enabling real fonts to be used on the web without binding or other DRM. — 16 July 2009
• Web Fonts Now (How We’re Doing With That): Commercial foundries that allow @font-face embedding; browser support; Cufón and SIFR, oh, my; Adobe, web fonts, and EOT; Typekit debuts; — 23 May 2009

Filed under: Fonts, Formats, Web Standards, webfonts, webtype

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Join Ethan Marcotte and me tonight at 8:00 PM EDT on the CreativeXpert Live Show, an interview and podcast with live listener call-in via Skype and Twitter.

We’ll discuss the newly released third edition of Designing with Web Standards and such topics from its pages as selling standards to reluctant clients and bosses, changing what support for IE6 means, understanding and transitioning to HTML5, neato CSS3-based design techniques you can use right now, and more.

Tune in, call in, rock on.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2810

Filed under: Design, DWWS, HTML5, Interviews, Zeldman

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It’s the Fonty-Fresh™ thang! UPDATE: Now with further explanations and Mr Zeldman’s specific concerns for web designers, web users, and the future of type on the web.

• If real fonts on the web are of interest to you (and if they aren’t, why are you here?), you’ll enjoy Tim Brown’s iPhone-friendly summary of recent web type events, tests, and opinions. Of special note in that list of juicy goodness is Font Squirrel’s tweet about the difficulty of getting fonts to render well in Windows. I will have something to say on that topic soon. (Preview: Real fonts look bad in Windows.)
• UPDATE: From reader Ben Kiel of House Industries, here is more than you wanted to know about why the same fonts look different on different platforms and browsers, i.e. why fonts look bad in Windows.
• FontShop’s Flickr set ScreenFonts BeNeLux looks at the typefaces on posters for new movies released in Belgium and The Netherlands. It is a companion to the international ScreenFonts on The FontFeed, FontShop’s monthly review of movie poster typography.
• ilovetypography’s Sex, lies, & type explores much of last week’s font news, including the introduction of Mr Eaves, and one’s own discovery of the Film posters typeset in Trajan pool at Flickr.com.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2782

Filed under: Fonts, links, spec, Standards, webfonts, webtype

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Monday, November 30th, 2009 marks the third annual International Blue Beanie Day in Support of Web Standards. Don a blue toque to show your support for web standards, grab a photo of yourself sporting said headgear, and upload it to the Blue Beanie Day 2009 photo pool on Flickr. Got an illustrated Twitter/Flickr avatar? Give it a blue beanie designed by Kevin Cornell. Download the zipped Photoshop file here.

• Facebook: Blue Beanie Day event page
• Flickr: Blue Beanie Day 2009 Photo Pool
• Bearskinrug, home of illustrator Kevin Cornell

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2774

Filed under: Blue Beanie Day, Community, Web Standards

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A longing for love and approval. That’s the dirty little secret of success.

Yes, you must make something people want. Of course, you must improve and extend it. Certainly, you must give 110% where customer satisfaction is concerned. Definitely, you must convert your customers to evangelists. All of that is true, always has been and will be.

BUT.

But you won’t be able to do those things, not really, not all the way, not as they must be done, unless there is a brokenness in you that continually craves attention and affection you somehow missed out on.

You have to have been abandoned, betrayed, ridiculed, unsupported at some point when you needed it most.

This sounds terrible and it is. But it’s the facts.

A contented person with a whole heart, who has never doubted for a moment that she is loved by God and the universe, should not bother trying to succeed as a creative entrepreneur. She should get a job working for someone else, turn it off at 6:00 PM, and come home to the people who love her.

Only a restless, broken heart can drive you to do what is necessary.

And that’s how to succeed in business without really crying.

Filed under: business, Career, glamorous

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In Issue No. 294 of A List Apart, for people who make websites: learn what usability testing is and isn’t good for, and discover the five warning signs of a bad client relationship (and what to do about them).

The Myth of Usability Testing

by ROBERT HOEKMAN JR.

Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome.

Getting to No

by GREG HOY

A bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you’re in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2725

Filed under: A List Apart, business, client management, clients, Usability, User Experience, UX

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Our classic orange avatar has turned blue to celebrate the release of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition by Jeffrey Zeldman with Ethan Marcotte. This substantial revision to the foundational web standards text will be in bookstores across the U.S. on October 19, 2009, with international stores to follow. Save 37% off the list price when you buy it from Amazon.com.

• What’s new in the 3rd Edition
• Mini-site

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2730

Filed under: 3e, books, CSS, Design, development, DOM, DWWS, HTML5, javascript, Publications, Real type on the web, Standards, State of the Web, Typography, Usability, User Experience, Web Design, Web Standards, webfonts, XHTML, Zeldman

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For those who couldn’t be there, and for those who were there and seek to savor the memories, here is An Event Apart Chicago, all wrapped up in a pretty bow:

AEA Chicago – official photo set

By John Morrison, subism studios llc. See also (and contribute to) An Event Apart Chicago 2009 Pool, a user group on Flickr.

A Feed Apart Chicago

Live tweeting from the show, captured forever and still being updated. Includes complete blow-by-blow from Whitney Hess.

Luke W’s Notes on the Show

Smart note-taking by Luke Wroblewski, design lead for Yahoo!, frequent AEA speaker, and author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Rosenfeld Media, 2008):

1. Jeffrey Zeldman: A Site Redesign
2. Jason Santa Maria: Thinking Small
3. Kristina Halvorson: Content First
4. Dan Brown: Concept Models -A Tool for Planning Websites
5. Whitney Hess: DIY UX -Give Your Users an Upgrade
6. Andy Clarke: Walls Come Tumbling Down
7. Eric Meyer: JavaScript Will Save Us All (not captured)
8. Aaron Gustafson: Using CSS3 Today with eCSStender (not captured)
9. Simon Willison: Building Things Fast
10. Luke Wroblewski: Web Form Design in Action (download slides)
11. Dan Rubin: Designing Virtual Realism
12. Dan Cederholm: Progressive Enrichment With CSS3 (not captured)
13. Three years of An Event Apart Presentations

Note: Comment posting here is a bit wonky at the moment. We are investigating the cause. Normal commenting has been restored. Thank you, Noel Jackson.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2695

Filed under: A List Apart, An Event Apart, Appearances, architecture, art direction, Authoring, Browsers, bugs, Career, Chicago, cities, Code, Community, Compatibility, conferences, content, content strategy, creativity, CSS, Design, development, DOM, downloads, editorial, Education, engagement, eric meyer, events, flickr, Fonts, Formats, glamorous, Happy Cog™, HTML, HTML5, industry, Information architecture, Jason Santa Maria, javascript, Markup, photography, Real type on the web, Scripting, Search, social networking, speaking, spec, Standards, State of the Web

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You must read High Performance Web Sites Blog’s (yes, that’s really it’s name) @font-face and performance if you’re using @font-face to embed web-licensed fonts on sites you design (as I’ve done here).

Filed under: Browsers, Fonts, spec, Standards, State of the Web, Usability, User Experience, Web Standards, webfonts

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DeepBlueSky’s FindMeByIP instantly reveals your IP details and uses Modernizr to determine your browsers’ support for the latest CSS and HTML5 features.

Filed under: Browsers, Standards, State of the Web, Web Standards

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