My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content “the elephant in the room” of web design. She means it’s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for….

Without discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design folk have now birthed ourselves a second lumbering mammoth, thanks to our interest in “real fonts on the web“ (the unfortunate name we’ve chosen for the recent practice of serving web-licensed fonts via CSS’s decade-old @font-face declaration—as if Georgia, Verdana, and Times were somehow unreal).…

Put simply, even fonts optimized for web use (which is a whole thing: ask a type designer) will not look good in every browser and OS.

Jeffrey Zeldman, Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room
22 December, 2009
24 ways: The Advent Calendar for Web Developers

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Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=3319

Filed under: spec, Standards, State of the Web, Tools, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards, webfonts, webtype, writing, Zeldman

6 Responses to “Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room”

1. Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room | Web Developer said on 21 December 2009 at 7:54 pm:

   [...] My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content “the elephant in the room” of web design. She means it’s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for…. Without discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design [. [...] Read the full article at the source. [...]

2. 
   Jonathan Hoefler said on 21 December 2009 at 10:22 pm:

   Perhaps the situation will continue to improve as more skilled type designers, who have experience with technology and love these kinds of challenges, continue to throw their hats into the ring. Just a thought! Best wishes for 2010.

3. uberVU - social comments said on 21 December 2009 at 11:24 pm:

   Social comments and analytics for this post…

   This post was mentioned on Twitter by DaveStreck: Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room http://bit.ly/7U2lNQ…

4. 
   Jeffrey Zeldman said on 22 December 2009 at 7:29 am:

   Jonathan:

   Thanks for your comment. I’m sure that is true. It’s just going to take a while.

5. Lo último - Consultas Gratis said on 28 December 2009 at 4:39 pm:

   [...] Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content “the elephant in the room” of web design. She means it’s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for…. Without discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design [...] [...]

6. News Feeds - Steenstraat Arnhem said on 29 December 2009 at 1:14 am:

   [...] Real Fonts and Rendering: The New Elephant in the Room My friend, the content strategist Kristina Halvorson, likes to call content “the elephant in the room” of web design. She means it’s the huge problem that no one on the web development team or client side is willing to acknowledge, face squarely, and plan for…. Without discounting the primacy of the content problem, we web design [...] [...]

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