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sIFR: greatest web developer invention of 2009

 
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Cylinsier
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 11:38 am    Post subject: sIFR: greatest web developer invention of 2009 Reply with quote

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr

The background:

When designing and developing web sites, one of the hardest things to accommodate for has always been font. While the average reader doesn't always notice it, the font of a web site is a huge part of its presentation. Unfortunately, web browsers have always worked by accessing fonts locally on each user's computer...which means I can design a site in some sexy font I created but if you don't have the font installed on your computer (and if I made it, you won't), then you're just going to see plain old arial. And the whole flow of the site can be screwed up because not all fonts are exactly the same size. Basically, developers have been forced to either use graphics in place of type or stick with boring fonts for a long time for the sake of user consistency.

The FREE product:

sIFR uses a combination of CSS (the part of web code that determines the design of a page), javascript (a scripting language used to create dynamic function - things that change after the site has loaded) and flash (a presentation technology that adds elements to a page which can carry a level of design and animation not possible with normal code).

For an example, look at the OR homepage. Its mostly html, but "Online Extras" thingy is probably flash. It creates the animated look. The ads? Those are handled by javascript. That is why you see a different one every time you load the page; this is what I mean by dynamic. And all the colors and fonts? The links being blue? Even the background coloring of the site? That's all handled by the CSS (the Cascading Style Sheet).

Basically:

HTML = Content
CSS = Presentation
Scripting Languages = Interaction
Flash = the principals of scripting (interaction) applied to style (presentation)

sIFR isn't perfect because it still relies on flash and javascript, two things which still don't work for everyone. But it is highly compatible across all platforms and assuming a user has javascript enabled and flash installed (almost everyone does), it should work.

And its free. And its incredibly efficient in load times. Basically, all it does is run the page, then use the above technologies to dynamically replace your default fonts with the embedded font you choose...without the user needing to have that font. The 1% of people who it doesn't work for see the default font.

This is a huge development for the web industry.
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ellipses
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, is the text that is rendered from sIFR "text" or is it an image of text? Can I highlight a block of sIFR-created text, copy it, and paste it in a word doc or in a search box?
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ellipses wrote:
So, is the text that is rendered from sIFR "text" or is it an image of text? Can I highlight a block of sIFR-created text, copy it, and paste it in a word doc or in a search box?


Yes. Its not an image, its an actual font substitution, the same way you can substitute font in CSS. A CSS font declaration normally looks like this:

font-family: myfont, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;

(Because you always want a sans-serif font for readability).

The text is straight text, but how it looks changes based on your settings. The CSS starts from the left. The first font is my custom font...which no one has installed. I see all my text in that font, but you don't have it, so when you go to my site, it passes that and goes to helvetica. Most people have that, but some people back on Windows 98 don't, so it goes to arial. Somewhere in Madagascar, a guy in a Amiga doesn't have arial, so it just goes to his default sans-serif font. If he doesn't have a sans-serif...then it goes to Amiga uckchit whatever font.

What sIFR does is embed your fonts in a flash file. Then, the CSS defines the font and instead of checking the user's fonts, it goes to the flash file and simulates the font from there.

Its text. You can copy and paste and whatnot.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Neato.
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