Custom ajax fonts

tripdragon · October 2005

An idea I always had, and now ajax could do it. Just like a bold tag we could have a window that could open up and list a number of nice fonts that could be used and then when the file saves it could could save the fonts as an image instead of the text, just makeing it basic white and black would be a small file size.. and could give a neater reading experience at the basic text size. Cause of course it cant scale yet till we get jpeg 2000

Kosmo · October 2005

That is satan you are talking about. Besides, why can't you make a set of letters of your liking and use them like you'd use smilies?

tripdragon · October 2005

this would be faster and dynamic.

Kosmo · October 2005

faster and dynamic satan, that's what it is.

the aloha · October 2005

that would be the efforts of mankind devoted towards a minor improvement that most people simply do not care about; also known as satan's bidding. leave me, satan.

Krak · October 2005

Im confused. You want to be able to change the font you post with? And have it converted to an image? Why?

lech · October 2005

You do realize that after 50 long-winded posts, the server would be jam packed with these "images as messages" and you couldn't search for anything, right?

the aloha · October 2005

on top of that, i forgot to mention that i know of both php and flash being able to do this devil's work.

lech · October 2005

ewww, flash. This idea would be wrong on so many levels. You do know that if you want to resize your text, all you have to do is hold ctrl + scroll the mousewheel, right? otherwise you could always set up your own custom stylesheet to over-ride other font settings you don't like :P

Kosmo · October 2005

Well, there are several clever typeface changing techniques that still allow the text being accessible and searchable, one of those techniques can be seen in use at Shaun Inman and I think it uses JS for that, but the Flash text replacement technique is also very popular when using headers, but it is not suitable for regular text. But I wouldn't risk it to render a whole pages worth of text on a forum, I'm presuming that no one would like to wait for a good couple of minutes for the script to render a whole page just because some jackass wanted to have some crappy font on his boards.

tripdragon · October 2005

it could be limited to a number of letters or words

Kosmo · October 2005

It could be used in user names, topics and button texts but I would keep it away from the regular text, since the easier it is to read the better it is for the whole community.

timberford · October 2005

the flash embedded font technique (sIFR) created by inman is very clever and used sparingly really can enhance a design. the text looks and can be selected like normal text and if you don't have flash it degrades nicely back to your css based font-family selector. this ajax thing sounds a bit over the top though.

Kosmo · October 2005

Especially when the AJAX solution would be extremely close to the JS solution, how much more scripting and bling flash you'd need for it to be suitable for your needs?

the aloha · October 2005

flash, as it is at this point, is inherently inaccessible. i know all it takes is an easy download, but why force anyone to do anything to look at your content? just because you went to art school, or because you bought or pirated the program is not enough of a reason. i am starting to take a sick joy in people proclaiming how easy it is to do something in new language of the month and then still haveing to ask how to do it by way of requesting the extension instead of coding it themselves.

FLC · October 2005

i am starting to take a sick joy in people proclaiming how ajax could now do what they wanted, even though XMLHttpRequest has been around for as long as I care to remember (at least IE 4 days)

Krak · October 2005

What do you have against flash. Really. I dont know of anyone, except maybe a few of you, that dont have it. Its a 2 second download. I'd say 99% of internet users have it. Flash is awesome. I dont like pages that go overboard with it, but I have used it in the past. Made an awesome header with smoke, made a cool computer chip with electric pulses. I mean really. C'mon.

lech · October 2005

Krak, it's not that it's a 2 second download, it's more like taking the mountainous high-road vs's the easy and joyeous straight path. There are seriously better ways to accomodate this without the need for extensive images or embeded flash with degredation etc. I'm sure others who've come across slap and run software like mentioned will probably agree with me that it's a total pain in the ass and a massive mangement nightmare when done wrong. You're seriously trading 2.5kb of text stored into a db, and proposing to slap it into a 5kb image or an adding an additional 5-10kb flash movie to re-render what is already plain textual data. This might be useful for maybe rerendering the RSS feed or some random one-shot function, but not for a series of elements on a message board. And flash tends to run like shit on anything outside of windows half the time, so this would honestly not be much of a benefit. Sorry, I just think this is the stupidest idea conceived so far and would rather vote for banner sized signatures with oodles of obnoxious font tags. </sarcasm>

Minisweeper · October 2005

peeks through a gap in the door, shuts it quietly and strolls on by pretending he was never here

the aloha · October 2005

i have it installed, but i don't work with it. stuff done in flash always looks like it is done in flash. that is fine and all, but it has become so boring even as a viewer. not all content should be "clean" and "high-tech". almost every flash site i see goes overboard with being flashy. i resent waiting for a simple site to load only because someone wanted to do it in flash. the lack of taste, i feel, is a matter of the tool being too powerful for most producers' good. plus, as lech points out, flash plays best with windows. the 1% are just as important as the 99%. some people do not want to use flash, and that is their perogative. some people still have old computers that can't run flash; they should be able to have as rich of an experience as possible. then add that there are no other accessability functions within flash for the handicapped and flash is very inaccessable. as a producer, i want to be able to legitimately use the tools i use without anyone else caring or ever wanting a cut.

Krak · October 2005

No no, I think you got me wrong. Im against this idea (the ajax, image text thing). I was just wondering why so many people (on this forum it seems) seem to be against flash. lol I wasnt argueing for the imagifying(?) of text. I dont like sites that use flash for like, everything and what not. But for groovy images, headers and so forth, it kicks ass. Just because a few sites go overboard with it, or make crappy flash code doesnt mean the teh entire intarweb should just scrap it.

Krak · October 2005

Hrmm.. To me, no the 1% doesnt matter, its too small of a minority to focus on. When you make something, you have a target audience and you go for it. Thats not always 100%. PCs too slow to run flash? Gimme a break, if your shit is that slow, your not surfing the web as it is. As for "other accessability functions within flash for the handicapped"...that goes with what I was saying about target audiences. If your making a site that has a large group of people that need "other accessability functions" chances are you are not using flash. And if you are, your an idiot.

the aloha · October 2005

i must be missing these groovy images you are seeing.

Krak · October 2005

You must be going to the wrong places.

Krak · October 2005

I didnt mean to sound like a dick. I re-read my comments and it kind of sounded like it. Sorry.

tripdragon · October 2005

to much mean fighting. Flash is a a:) simple to ise or b:) a pain to use. And untill Ajax stuff gets it's own gui system for creation designers will keep useing flash and love it. Ya'll 1% without flash will have to suffer cause the tools gotta be built for us to use. It is hard enough trying to cater to every single messed up "i wanna interpt css mine own way" broswer but then to shoot down flash and foruce us to us some thing called ajax that is pure code and once again hass all of the same problems with a trillion broswers crap, you can start to see why (hopefully) that we dont touch ajax yet., As for the text idea, dont worry about it, they are not all gems.

413x · October 2005

@tripdragon, please choose one (and be honest): [ ] yes, I understand the concept behind the web and its standards [ ] no, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about sorry, couldn't resist because I think you just don't get it. you blind-focused groovy smoovy designers just don't get the fact, that "groovy smoovy" should be just an add-on wrapped around the information, not replacing the information. and if the "groovy smoovy" hides the important informations from the user (or a possible percentage of the users) it's just not appropriate. and please stop discriminating the disabled. and by the way. I don't think that there are just about 1% of the web-users without flash. that's purely a marketing number. based on my experiences it should be much higher, as a lot of people (temporarily) disabled flash because of the common abuse in adverts / banner "design". also not all users have the latest version of the flash plugin installed (and hey, we both know that only latest versions rule </irony>)

Minisweeper · October 2005

what disabilities prevent people from viewing flash sites? o_O

413x · October 2005

@minesweeper: blindness and color blindness? or are there screenreaders which can handle flash?

Krak · October 2005

Well like I said earlier. If you making a site that has a large audience, or any audience for that matter, of people that use screenreaders (or have other disabilities) .... most likely your not using flash. And if you are, well..... Most flash sites I see are related to gaming, or webhosting, or graphics, personal sites, etc etc...stuff like that. Why would I make a site for retired WW2 veterans in flash? That doesnt make sense. C'mon people.

lech · October 2005

@krak, pc's don't have a problem with flash, it's the other way around, other platforms have a problem with it. Primarily macs which tend to really lag and draw up huge cpu resources just to view something that's 1/4 of the screen in dimension. Also, I've had instances here on my laptop running linux which in some cases, calling up flash crashed firefox oddly enough. So out of my experience, flash seems to run best on windows. @Mini, some screen readers cannot interpret flash, ever seen flash running lynx? :D don't answer that but you'll get the idea hopefully. Also there's the inability to scale it like you can with regular browser text. It's like some of those really annoying sites that use the 5px fonts with light grey on white. Flash still has some hurdles to conquer in the usability dept otherwise they're moving slowly towards figuring things out. As an overall medium for say video and interactive media that's properly rendered, it's perfect. But no one site should rely on it. @tripdragon, dude, do you even know what AJAX really is?!

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