Typekit: Typography for the web… finally… really?

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 02 June 2009 07:52PM CDT

Section: Internet

TypographyReal typography on the web has been as elusive as a shadow at night. One of the brightest web designers, Jeff Veen and his cohorts at Small Batch, aim to change all that with Typekit. Veen thinks modern web browsers have matured to a level where cascading stylesheet (CSS) support is sufficient to specify and render type properly.

The W3C web fonts module for the CSS 3 specification has been available since 2002, but until recently none of the major browsers could link to a font file. Now, all of the major browsers—except Internet Explorer—support this function. And Typekit incorporates support for using Microsoft’s embedded OpenType (EOT) file format as a last resort for Internet Explorer. As Veen writes, “No longer will you need to trap your content in images or Flash just to express yourself visually. Pages will be more usable, accessible, and indexable. This is a massive upgrade for the web.”

A Panglossian web designer would specify type in CSS, link to the appropriate font file, and off she’d go. Except that most typefaces are protected by copyright and aren’t licensed for use on the web. Full stop. Typekit hopes to serve as a licensing intermediary to host type and provide a way of solving browser differences in how they handle type. Veen says that an added line of JavaScript (and a license fee, of course) is all that’s required. Reserving final judgement until the system actually ships, Typekit certainly sounds a lot easier to implement than the current alternatives.

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The trouble with Twitter

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 05 April 2009 11:00AM CDT

Section: Internet

Twitter fail whaleTwitter is an important social networking tool for both individuals and businesses. Make no doubt about that. Twitter is basically a short message service (SMS) for the internet. But the trouble with Twitter is that it’s a complete and total attention drain. And for me, I’ve found it to be inessential. Much like SMS messaging on mobile phones. And going forward, my life is all about what’s essential.

This past week I was totally offline and disconnected for the first time in probably 25 years. Coming back was interesting and shocking. The email backlog was truly horrifying, as was the RSS feed backlog. It took me maybe three seconds to decide to ditch Twitter and remove TweetDeck from my dock. I’m almost certain that it won’t return.

It was a matter of priorities. Email can’t be ignored. I’ve carefully pruned my RSS feeds over the years to the really essential information sources. Twitter is at best interesting (but far too rarely) but not really essential. Here’s why: I’d much rather spend more time in the RSS realm reading something that someone took the time and effort to use one of the absolutely horrid weblog or content management system editors to publish an article. Because of the time and effort involved, the quality is usually inordinately better. I’m learning to become outright selfish with my attention and I find low quality attempts to attract my attention extremely frustrating.

Twitter’s just too easy. 140 characters and out. And those damn shortened URLs that are a spammer’s dream, giving you no idea of where you’re attention is being directed. Additionally, shortened URLs steal hard-earned independent Google juice and are totally dependent on the viability of the shortening service being used.

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Yikes: mega drop-down navigation actually works pretty well

By Michael Fraase

Tuesday, 24 March 2009 08:41PM CDT

Section: Internet

UsabilityHere’s the shocker for the week. Usability and human factors expert Jakob Nielsen has found that mega drop-down navigation panels actually work for dense or complicated subnavigation structures. This is especially surprising because, as Nielsen showed earlier, regular drop-down menus are a usability nightmare.

Mega drop-downs (when activated from a horizonal primary navigation structure)—or mega fly-outs (when activated from a vertical primary navigation structure) are characterized by two-dimensional panels divided into groups of elements that are structured through layout or typography. To be effective, mega drop-downs and mega fly-outs have to contain the entire subnavigation structure without scrolling. These elements can optionally use link titles to emulate tooltips.

Nielsen uses foodnetwork.com as a mega drop-down example:

Mega drop-down navigation menu

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