Slashdot Mirror
What Makes a Good Web Font
SitePoint writes "We've published an article on the way in which fonts are used on the Web. We found that a large "x-height" (the height of a lowercase 'x' in relation to the total height of the font) makes fonts more readable on a computer screen, as does a wide "punch width" (the width of the hole inside letters such as 'o' and 'b'). Helvetica is a good font to use online. The designer's choice of fonts is usually limited by the user's OS, but techniques such as SIFr (example) are allowing Web designers to provide their own fonts."
Don't you need written permission from the content provider to do that? You know, taking their intellectual property and creating your own derivative work by applying your own formatting preferences to it... Surely web designers should specify exactly how they want their page to appear, and browsers should render it as they intended; doing otherwise is probably a DMCA violation. Indeed, using a non-standard browser is probably a violation in itself; Firefox does not render many standards-compliant websites correctly, and so is creating unauthorised derivative works. The Mozilla foundation is probably liable for a fortune.
note: by 'standards' we mean Internet Explorer 6, which is the industry standard and is all that should be necessary for development and testing.
(sigh)
The worrying thing is there are PHBs around who really will think like this.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"practically as fast"
AKA "slower"
Comic Sans, when I design web pages using Comic Sans Bold, I can often visualise expressions of satisfaction and almost.. ecstacy, on the faces of the people browsing my humble pages.
I don't often get repeat work, but I feel I've done my bit for society.