Browsing CSS

Making Web Fonts Work Jon Tan on the current state of embedding typefaces. It never occurred to me that @font-face might incur a delay before rendering text (a common complaint against sIFR). And I had completely forgotten how rubbish ClearType is. Until anti-aliasing discrepancies between platforms can be resolved I don’t see even a standardized approach being accepted by discerning designers. Looks like we’re in for another four years of flash replacement. 

The State of Font Embedding Mark Wubben, the maintainer of sIFR, thinks out loud about font embedding and the various stop-gap alternatives. 

typeface.js Text replacement using the Canvas element instead of Flash. Dear type vendors, please save us from these convoluted stopgaps. Legally, The Internet (via email) 

CSS Browser Selector A lightweight (less than 1kb) JavaScript file that conditionally classes the html element allowing you to write browser specific selectors in your CSS. A simple, elegant solution. (via) 

CSS Wishlist I can’t speak for the other interviewees but CHOCKLOCK was definitely off when I composed my response. I think all the shouting makes us come across more crotchety than any of us really were. (Turns out Chris just forgot a </CHOCKLOCK> somewhere in his markup—all better now.) 

Hello Old Friend Or “Specifying font-size with pixels no longer considered harmful.” Mint says IE 6 usage is down to less than 2% of visitors around these parts. 

CSS Filters for Firefox, Safari and Opera Of particular interest are the Firefox and Opera filters, both of which seem to seat the text baseline oddly high at smaller font-sizes relative to line- and x-height. 

Go to Hell-vetica A comparison of the baselines of Apple’s default and Adobe’s Helvetica Neue. Hoping someone out there has encountered this problem before and discovered a workaround. 

Helvetica Neue Light Progress or “Hoop Jumping for the Whole Font-Family.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that font-weight works like it was already supposed to, but breaking existing CSS to do so? Not so nice. 

An Event Apart San Francisco 2008 Jeremy Keith’s live blogging is the next best thing to being there.