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Design HTML HTML5 Standards State of the Web W3C Web Design Web Standards

NSFW tag in HTML 5

A “Not Safe for Work” Tag has been proposed for HTML 5:

One of the most common descriptive notes people have to write using text when they post links or images to blogs, comments or anywhere in HTML is to say “this link is not safe for work” or simply “NSFW”. By adding the <NSFW> tag, this could be made much simpler and standardized. Browsers could then have an option to automatically hide all <NSFW> content. A tag is preferred to an attribute since it could then also be used around content and not just links.

Examples:
<nsfw><a href=”http://www.example.com”>Pics here!</a></nsfw>
<nsfw><img src=”badkitten.jpg”></nsfw>

(Via Bruce Lawson)

Drew McLellan of The Web Standards Project thinks it’s a nice idea that won’t work:

@brucel we looked into #nsfw in microformats. It’s an unworkable minefield. #

it’s used when linking to something that you might want to save until you get home. e.g. http://ampleboobies.info (NSFW) #

So a browser could conceivably be configured not to follow links or display content tagged nsfw. Sounds a good idea, but unworkable. #

The use of tags (rather than CSS and JavaScript) to hide or show content is an intriguing and controversial aspect of HTML 5. It’s intriguing because using a standard tag—instead of writing custom CSS and JavaScript that someone else may someday have to maintain—potentially simplifies web development and maintenance, bringing advanced techniques of content presentation to more sites for less money. It’s controversial because it sticks presentation and behavior back in markup, after we all just spent a decade separating site structure and semantics from behavior and presentation.

We’re going to be following these developments and trying to make buzzword-free sense of them for you.

[tags]standards, webstandards, HTML, HTML5, tags, NSFW, W3C[/tags]

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Accessibility Advocacy content copyright creativity CSS Design development DWWS Fonts Ideas industry links Real type on the web Standards State of the Web Tools Web Design Web Standards webfonts webtype

Web fonts now (how we’re doing with that)

THE WEB Fonts Wiki has a page listing fonts you can legally embed in your site designs using the CSS standard @font-face method. Just as importantly, the wiki maintains a page showing commercial foundries that allow @font-face embedding. Between these two wiki pages, you may find just the font you need for your next design (even if you can’t currently license classics like Adobe Garamond or ITC Franklin and Clarendon).

The advantages of using fonts other than Times, Arial, Georgia, and Verdana have long been obvious to designers; it’s why web design in the 1990s was divided between pages done in Flash, and HTML pages containing pictures of fonts—a practice that still, bizarrely, continues even in occasionally otherwise advanced recent sites.

Using real fonts instead of pictures of fonts or outlines of fonts provides speed and accessibility advantages.

Currently the Webkit-based Apple Safari browser supports @font-face. The soon-to-be-released next versions of Opera Software’s Opera browser, Google’s Webkit-based Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox will do likewise. When I say “soon-to-be-released,” I mean any day now. When this occurs, all browsers except IE will support @font-face.

IE has, however, offered font embedding since IE4 via Embedded OpenType (.EOT), a font format that enables real fonts to be temporarily embedded in web pages. That is, the reader sees the font while reading the page, but cannot download (“steal”) the font afterwards. Microsoft has “grant[ed] to the W3C a perpetual, nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license under any Microsoft copyrights on this contribution, to copy, publish and distribute the contribution under the W3C document licenses,” in hopes that EOT would thereby become a standard. But so far, only Microsoft’s own browsers support EOT.

Thus, as we consider integrating real fonts into our designs, we must navigate between browsers that support @font-face now (Safari), those that will do so soon (Opera, Chrome, Firefox), and the one that possibly never will (IE, with a dwindling but still overwhelming market share).

The person who figures out a designer-friendly solution to all this will either be hailed as a hero/heroine or get rich. Meanwhile, near-complete solutions of varying implementation difficulty exist. Read on:

CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

“Instead of making pictures of fonts, the actual font files can be linked to and retrieved from the web. This way, designers can use TrueType fonts without having to freeze the text as background images.” An introduction to @font-face by Håkon Wium Lie, father of CSS.

Real Fonts on the Web: An Interview with The Font Bureau’s David Berlow

Is there life after Georgia? To understand issues surrounding web fonts from the type designer’s perspective, I interview David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the ?rst TrueType type designer.

The W3C: @font-face vs. EOT

A discussion that shows why the W3C may not be able to resolve this conflict. (It’s kind of like asking the Montagues and Capulets to decide whether the Montagues or the Capulets should rule Verona.)

sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses

Mike Davidson’s scalable and accessible remix of Shaun Inman’s pioneering use of Flash and JavaScript to replace short passages of HTML text with Flash movies of the same text set in a real font. The Flash movies are created on the fly. If JavaScript or images are turned off, the user “sees” the HTML text; text set in sIFR can also be copied and pasted. sIFR was a great initial solution to the problem of real fonts on the web, but it’s only for short passages (which means the rest of the page must still be set in Georgia or Verdana), and it fails if the user has a Flash block plug-in installed, as half of Firefox users seem to. It’s also always a pain to implement. I don’t know any designer or developer who has an easy time setting up sIFR. In short, while sIFR is an awesome stop-gap, real fonts on the web are still what’s needed. Which also leads us to…

Cufón – Fonts for the People

Simo Kinnunen’s method of embedding fonts, regardless of whether or not a browser supports @font-face.

Combining Cufón And @Font-Face

Kilian Valkhof: “Everyone wants @font-face to work everywhere, but as it stands, it only works in Safari and the upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera. In this article I’ll show you how to use Cufón only if we can’t load the font through other, faster methods.”

Adobe, Web Fonts, and EOT

Why Adobe supports Microsoft’s EOT instead of @font-face.

Introducing Typekit

Update May 28, 2009: Working with Jason Santa Maria, Jeff Veen’s company Small Batch Inc. introduces Typekit:

We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

Read more

  • Web Fonts, HTML 5 Roundup: Worthwhile reading on the hot new web font proposals, and on HTML 5/CSS 3 basics, plus a demo of advanced HTML 5 trickery. — 20 July 2009
  • Web Fonts Now, for real: David Berlow of The Font Bureau has proposed a Permissions Table for OpenType that can be implemented immediately to turn raw fonts into web fonts without any wrappers or other nonsense. If adopted, it will enable type designers to license their work for web use, and web designers to create pages that use real fonts via the CSS @font-face standard. — 16 July 2009

[tags]fonts, webfonts, webdesign, embed, @font-face, EOT, wiki, css, layout, safari, opera, firefox, chrome, browsers[/tags]

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An Event Apart Appearances Browsers Career client services Code Community content creativity CSS Design eric meyer events Happy Cog™ HTML HTML5 Ideas Images industry Information architecture jobs Redesigns Seattle speaking Standards State of the Web Surviving The Profession tweets twitter Working Zeldman

AEA Seattle after-report

Armed with nothing more than a keen eye, a good seat, a fine camera, and the ability to use it, An Event Apart Seattle attendee Warren Parsons captured the entire two-day show in crisp and loving detail. Presenting, for your viewing pleasure, An Event Apart Seattle 2009 – a set on Flickr.

When you’ve paged your way through those, have a gander at Think Brownstone’s extraordinary sketches of AEA Seattle.

Still can’t get enough of that AEA stuff? Check out the official AEA Seattle photo pool on Flickr.

Wonder what people said about the event? Check these Twitter streams: AEA and AEA09.

And here are Luke W’s notes on the show.

Our thanks to the photographers, sketchers, speakers, and all who attended.

[tags]aneventapart, aeaseattle09, AEA, AEA09, Seattle, webdesign, conference, Flickr, sets, Twitter, photos, illustrations, sketches, aneventapart.com[/tags]

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data industry Information architecture State of the Web

Men like it fast, women like it good

In a recent usability survey, researchers from Southern Illinois University found that after ease of use, men prefer fast download speed to easy navigation. Women prefer ease of use, easy navigation, and accessibility. The researchers hypothesize that these different usability criteria are due to differences in how men and women use the web.

Details at “Usability Study: Men Need Speed – web usability criteria show gender differences.”

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Design development DigitalUnderground Publications State of the Web Web Design work Zeldman zeldman.com

Pardon My History

Although the WayBack machine did not preserve any of this website’s first year, it did capture quite a lot of our second year, 1996. Behold the splendor of the early web:

And much more. Enjoy!

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A List Apart Advocacy art direction business CSS Design development Fonts Happy Cog™ HTML Ideas industry Interviews Layout Publications Publishing Standards State of the Web Typography Usability User Experience UX Web Design Web Standards Working XHTML

ALA 282: Life After Georgia

In Issue No. 282 of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites:

  • Can we finally get real type on the web?
  • Does beauty in design have a benefit besides aesthetic pleasure?

Real Fonts on the Web: An Interview with The Font Bureau’s David Berlow

by DAVID BERLOW, JEFFREY ZELDMAN

Is there life after Georgia? We ask David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the ?rst TrueType type designer, how type designers and web designers can work together to resolve licensing and technology issues that stand between us and real fonts on the web.

In Defense of Eye Candy

by STEPHEN P. ANDERSON

Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.

A List Apart explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

[tags]alistapart, type, typography, realtype, truetype, CSS, beauty, design, aesthetics[/tags]

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art direction books Community content creativity CSS Design downloads Free Happy Cog™ HTML Ideas industry Information architecture jobs Layout Publications Publishing reprints State of the Web The Essentials The Profession Tools Typography Usability User Experience UX W3C Web Design Web Standards Websites Working writing Zeldman

“Taking Your Talent to the Web” is now a free downloadable book

Taking Your Talent To The Web, a guide for the transitioning designer, by L. Jeffrey Zeldman. Hand model: Tim Brown.

RATED FIVE STARS at Amazon.com since the day it was published, Taking Your Talent to the Web (PDF) is now a free downloadable book from zeldman.com:

I wrote this book in 2001 for print designers whose clients want websites, print art directors who’d like to move into full–time web and interaction design, homepage creators who are ready to turn pro, and professionals who seek to deepen their web skills and understanding.

Here we are in 2009, and print designers and art directors are scrambling to move into web and interaction design.

The dot-com crash killed this book. Now it lives again. While browser references and modem speeds may reek of 2001, much of the advice about transitioning to the web still holds true.

It’s yours. Enjoy.

Oh, yes, here’s that ancient Amazon page.


Short Link

Update – now with bookmarks

Attention, K-Mart shoppers. The PDF now includes proper Acrobat bookmarks, courtesy of Robert Black. Thanks, Robert!

Categories
Standards State of the Web

UnDugg

With Digg relenting, the Digg bar’s assault on our content, ranking, and traffic will soon fade like every other lousy idea on the web, and we can once again retire our unframing scripts.

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architecture Blogs and Blogging business Design findability HTML Ideas industry Information architecture links Publications Publishing Respect Standards State of the Web twitter Usability User Experience UX Web Design Web Standards Websites

Tiny URL, Big Trouble

Joshua Schachter explains how URL shorteners like TinyURL, bit.ly, etc., originally created to prevent long URLs from breaking in 1990s e-mail clients, and now used primarily as a means of monetizing someone else’s content, are bad:

  • They “add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system, [making what] used to be transparent … opaque,” slowing down web use by adding needless lookups, and potentially disguising spam.
  • Shorteners “steal search juice” from the original publishers. (For example, with the Digg bar and Digg short URL, your content makes Digg more valuable and your site less valuable; the more content you create, the richer you make Digg.)
  • “A new and potentially unreliable middleman now sits between the link and its destination. And the long-term archivability of the hyperlink now depends on the health of a third party.”

And more. Via Merlin Mann.

Anyone who creates web content should read Joshua’s post. I’m sold and will dial way back on my use of the zeldman.com short URL. The question remains, what to do when you need to paste a long, cumbersome link into a 140-character service like Twitter. (If you do nothing, Twitter itself will shorten the link via TinyURL.)

[tags]URL, URLshortener, JoshuaSchachter, redirect, abstraction, Digg, findability, searchjuice, SEO[/tags]

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Design Ideas industry Interviews nytimes speaking Standards State of the Web tv Typography Usability User Experience Web Design Web Standards Zeldman zeldman.com

More Zeldman Fun From BigThink

Bigthink.com/jeffreyzeldman is your BigThink channel for all your BigThink Jeffrey Zeldman needs. Now playing at that URL are three Zeldman interview clips for your pleasure:

  1. “Jeff” Zeldman dissects online journalism
  2. “Jeff” Zeldman outlines the history of blogging
  3. “Jeff” Zeldman discusses the future of open source

View early and view often. Happy watching and blogging.

[tags]bigthink, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman, interviews, internet, web, design, history, journalism, online, onlinejournalism, webpublishing, opensource, webstandards[/tags]

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Design Ideas industry State of the Web

Visualizing Web Currents

Information Architects Japan present Web Trend Map 4 – Final Beta, a map of leading currents of web thought and commerce.

A List Apart is in, of course, along with Amazon, Apple, Wikipedia, Twitter, PayPal, and many of your other favorites. For a close-up view, see it in Zoomorama.

Via Tech Crunch by way of lmarino.

[tags]web, trend, map, visualization[/tags]

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