My client (who is obsessed with pixel perfection) dislikes the way browsers render font-face fonts.
At the moment I am using font-squirrel to convert OTF fonts to webfonts.
The problem is, I don't see any alternatives. I could create a PNG file holding all these texts, but that doesn't sound like a browser-user-friendly solution.
The typical example of a design I have to work on is:
What would be your approach?
I'm assuming that by "dislikes the way browsers render #font-face" your'e referring to the blink which happens. If not, you should elaborate.
The top one is web-font and the bottom one is screengrab from PSD. Both using same font family, same spacing. The client wants to look it more like the bottom one.
I'm assuming that by "dislikes the way browsers render #font-face" your'e referring to the blink which happens. If not, you should elaborate.
Currently there's only 3 options to remove that blink. The first two are obvious solutions - use images, or use web safe fonts. These, obviously, defeat the purpose.
The third option is to embed base64 code for the fonts in your CSS. This increases the size (kb) of your CSS files, but it will completely eliminate the blink which tends to occur because the font is loaded with the CSS so there's no blink when a secondary file is loaded.
usage for including bas64 fonts looks like this:
#font-face {
font-family: "FontName";
src: url("data:font/opentype;base64,[ the base64 code here ]");
}
There are a few online bas64 converters that you can feed a .otf file to and they'll spit out the base64 code. Here's one such converter.
An approach that I have used is to create background images to represent all display-text, and then use CSS to "hide" the actual text, and show only the image. For the sake of accessibility, the text should not be hidden using display:none or display:hidden though. Instead, use a large negative text indent to move the text off the left side of the display, or put it in a nested, absolutely-positioned element somewhere outside of the display area.
I usually use the negative indentation for all text not contained in a clickable element, and the nested, absolutely positioned element technique for anything that is contained in a clickable element (so the active element outline does not expand off the left side as can happen in some browsers).
Another common and popular way of handling this is automatic font replacement (using JavaScript). This solution is friendly to users of screen readers, because the HTML contains plain text and the replacement is done using JavaScript, in the browser.
An example of this is technique is sIFR, which is open source and uses Flash as the replacement.
It looks like it has been bolded. Try setting font-weight to normal.
Related
I have a web page with text and an image. I want to place the text very precisely over the image.
I have discovered that with the font I am using, when viewing the page on windows, everything gets shifted down by about 4px. On Mac, iphone and android, it is placed correctly.
This does not happen if I use Courier New as the font, so I know that the problem is the font, however I have no choice but to use this font.
Is there a way to compensate for this purely in CSS, or do I need a javascript callback to detect windows and add a class so I can deal with it?
first of all, I would try tuning ling height, if that did not work, then I think you need to edit the font itself, you can do that using this site: https://transfonter.org/, uploading your font file and convert it to the formats you use and the important point is to check this toggle button, it adjusts some properties in the font so it has similar experience on different operating systems
if that did not work, there is a program called fontforge it gives you the ability to change font metrics, for more info you could check this question
Font Rendering / Line-Height Issue on Mac/PC (outside of element)
In other topics I've found that IE/FF doesn't print background images by default. Now that's a shame, because background images add some possibilities that are very difficult to reproduce with classical <img> tags:
You can align them both horizontally and vertically
You can crop them if they are larger than the target element (which also enables the idea of CSS sprites)
Now, it's not impossible to do, but it will require me to have different HTML layouts for printing and normal page, and the printing layout will be quite overcomplicated (since I'll have to use <table>s to achieve vertical alignment). Also, the benefits of CSS sprites will be lost.
Is there any hope? I gather that #media print doesn't help, but isn't there something else, maybe browser-specific, that would allow one to say: "Yes, this isn't a normal background, it really needs to be there even in print view"?
Not possible. You would have to some how convert your background images to img or use Canvas. Of course using canvas depends on which IE you supporting.
Its a browser setting which restricts the printing of background images. I think the logic behind it was that the vendors wanted to give the users the option of printing background images and ensure that the web developer could not alter these settings through some sort of script.
As a general rule, background images should be reserved for adding to the page design but aren't essential to understanding the content. Therefore it shouldn't matter if they are missing when the page is printed. If something (such as a product shot) is important, then it should be included as an actual image (which has the added bonus of being more accessible).
Could you look at including the image, then hiding it using CSS and duplicating is as a background image (perhaps dynamically using JS)? That way, you can ensure the image itself shows in your print stylesheet, and you get the benefits that having a background image brings. I've created a very simple example here.
I want to style some fonts in my css using the style- sharp found in Photoshop. Does anyone know the way?
Photoshop uses a custom font rendering engine which you won't be able to emulate using CSS. Furthermore, each platform has its own rendering engine which CSS cannot control.
For WebKit there is -webkit-font-smoothing but what it does is a far cry from what you're looking for.
No luck I'm afraid. The only way I know of (perhaps someone knows otherwise) to achieve this is to save the text in question as an image. Fine for headings etc., but not for body text.
The "sharpness" of a font is usually a thing of the font renderer which is part of the operating system. You should check the font settings. In Windows, for example, try turning off ClearType.
I'm afraid it's a browser/os combination that decides how your fonts are anti-aliased. Nothing you can do about it, except save the Photoshop output as an image, set it as a background for whichever container your text appears in and apply a negative text indent on it via css.
There is solution for font smoothing.
You can use cufon.js to render your font sharply & smoothly. This js renders your text as a cufon and if you right click on it it shows image. You can use this for heading.
Is there a method to include CSS background images in print?
If i use image replace techniques for (which is considered as a best practice) Logo then logo doesn't come in print.
and many places in site CSS background is saving bandwidth and my time both. but client is asking to include many things in print also.
And many places where i used background images but now client need background too at some places but on some places not.
What should i do?
Can we do anything with print css?
None of the browsers I'm aware of print backgrounds by default (to save ink/toner). I would also suggest that this is a time when using an image replacement technique is a little overkill -- for a logo the image could appear in the document (and with the relevant alternate text, still accessible)
I have an internal web app with an image at the top of the page, currently containing some english text with drop shadows. I now need to provide localized versions of this page for various languages. My main choices are:
Have a different graphic per supported language, containing the localized text.
Use CSS to position localized text over a plain image, with a complex CSS technique to get drop shadows in most current browsers.
Are there other options? This is for an educational environment, I don't get to control the browser used by the students.
I did try both removing the drop shadows from the graphic, and also moving the text into in a header in the HTML, but neither was appealing. People said it looked like a cheap knockoff of the current page, which wounds my pride.
Personally I'm a big fan of CSS techniques for visual effects like this. The big benefit is that you are offloading the processing of the effect to the client side, saving you bandwith and content creation time (custom text images for each locale is a big order!), and making the page download faster for the user.
The only reason to avoid it is if you absolutely MUST have the drop shadows on very old (IE5) browsers with next to no CSS support.
Edit: Just thought of something - I a few cases like this where I need a specific font or some exact text effect I've used PHP to render the text, with effects, to an image and cache it server side. That way you avoid the content creation process and gain wider browser support in exchange for bandwidth and server CPU time. It's your call if the tradeoff is acceptable.
Generate the images on request server-side for each language, complete with shadows. Cache them as needed.
If you can use Image Magick, you can refer to this tutorial for generating text + shadows...
Maintaining images with text can be a pain - even without localization, I'd avoid it.
Two choices that I would attempt before going with your options are:
Looking for a free program that generates drop-shadow images that you can have your program utilize whenever it detects that new text is available for the title
Using a shadow image that can be repeated as a background image underneath the text
If those don't work, I'd try the CSS, but test it in as many browsers as you can yourself before going live with it.
Well, Safari supports a proprietary CSS property for drop-shadows, but it won't work in other browsers. CSS3 will have drop-shadows, too (actually only one for boxes, but maybe it can be used for text, too, e.g. when the box has a transparent background).
But seeing that most browsers don't even have a 100% CSS2 support so far, I guess you need to go with one of your two options. Of course, there is a not so complex CSS trick to get a drop shadow:
Drop Shadows for Everyone
But they don't look as nice as a real shadow, since they are not blurred. Further you need to have the text twice in the HTML for these to work.