To that end, we’ve been developing a lot of internal tools for measuring and evaluating rendering performance across browsers, operating systems, and rendering environments. And we’re going to make them public as soon as we can, starting in the new year.
That’s great. Test pages and analysis tools are sorely missing.
@charles roper & jeffrey zeldman
while at body sizes, make sure you only select well-hinted fonts.
I agree. However, because hinting expertise is in short supply and the work is manual in nature, fonts that remain readable and aesthetically pleasant across the usual body-text spectrum of, say, 10px – 20px, are few and very far between. Only Microsoft seems to be able to muster the resources (hah!) – as in the Cleartype fonts like Cambria, Candara, Constantia, etc.
All of which are unavailable for licensing outside of the EOTL format. (hah hah!)
However, there are quite a few fonts, like Libertine, that allow for deriviative works and have the potential for improvement.
I, and others, are pursuing this and will continue to do so over the course of the coming years.
What @font-face has done is shine a light on all the deficiencies and lack of precision in font rendering and text flow and text layout that have always been with us hidden in plain sight.
Fifteen years into the web, I still can’t set a column of body text – hyphenated and justified – and know what it’s pixel container size, line count, and line breaks will be at any Zoom level across browsers and platforms. It’s a crap shoot.
This is no way to run the digital publishing medium of the future – of today, too, but we make allowances for youth – this has to change.
Richard Fink
@Jeffrey Veen
It sure is. I’m planning on the next decade.
That’s great. Test pages and analysis tools are sorely missing.
@charles roper & jeffrey zeldman
I agree. However, because hinting expertise is in short supply and the work is manual in nature, fonts that remain readable and aesthetically pleasant across the usual body-text spectrum of, say, 10px – 20px, are few and very far between. Only Microsoft seems to be able to muster the resources (hah!) – as in the Cleartype fonts like Cambria, Candara, Constantia, etc.
All of which are unavailable for licensing outside of the EOTL format. (hah hah!)
However, there are quite a few fonts, like Libertine, that allow for deriviative works and have the potential for improvement.
I, and others, are pursuing this and will continue to do so over the course of the coming years.
What @font-face has done is shine a light on all the deficiencies and lack of precision in font rendering and text flow and text layout that have always been with us hidden in plain sight.
Fifteen years into the web, I still can’t set a column of body text – hyphenated and justified – and know what it’s pixel container size, line count, and line breaks will be at any Zoom level across browsers and platforms. It’s a crap shoot.
This is no way to run the digital publishing medium of the future – of today, too, but we make allowances for youth – this has to change.
Happy holidays to all – Rich