I just finished reading back over the last chapter of Fluid Web Typography, and—for the first time in my writing career—I didn’t mind. Normally, by the end of a book project I’m so sick of the topic that I can barley bring myself to read one more word that I’ve written. I hear this from most of my author friends as well, but re-reading Fluid Web Typography, I was really excited about what I had written, also knowing that this is just the beginning. I have put as much as I could into this book about the current state of Web typography, but there is so much more to explore as the new Typography technologies are established and develop.

Up until the last week before I finished writing, circumstances on the ground were dramatically shifting under my feet as a I wrote. The day I turned in chapter 3 “Fonts & Typefaces”, which included 3 pages on how to use WEFT to convert TTF fonts to EOT, a new service was launched called Font Squirrel, which allows you to upload any font file and convert it not only to EOT, but SVG as well. Then a few days later, Mozilla announces support for the WOFF format in the next release of Firefox, which had only just been announced as a draft. Only days later Font Squirrel added WOFF conversion, giving us a round-trip solution for a standard that wasn’t even being discussed when I started this book. So, when I got chapter 3 back I had to rip-out huge sections , write new ones, and re-write others.

For this book, it’s all over now but the printing, and it will be off to the printers next week and in finer book stores everywhere by early December.

To everyone who has emailed me, and I haven’t gotten back to you, I apologize. The next few weeks will be spent with my family and catching up on many other tasks that I let slide while concentrating on Fluid Web Typography. If you haven’t heard from me in the next few weeks, feel free to email me again with any questions, comments, or criticism.

Also, to celebrate finishing the book, I’m going to be giving away several copies of my last book, Speaking In Styles. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed for an announcement in the next few days.

Tags: CSS, Typography by jason
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This week I had two different articles go out on different blogs.

The first was over on Peachpit.com where I’m writing a weekly blog now called “Ask the Web Designer“. This week I answered the very basic question “What is a Web designer?” Answer: Everybody. Here’s a bit more of my answer:

The long answer is that a good Web designer is a good design, and this can come “naturally” or from training, but is not medium dependent. However, a professional Web designer has to understand the medium well enough to know it’s strengths and limitations. Any designer can pump out something that looks brilliant when displayed in a Web browser window, but is slow to load, static when loaded, and completely unusable.

Read the article »

I also finally had an article I wrote weeks ago published in Webdesigner Depot with 5 (really 6) new CSS3 techniques that work in several browsers. However, since none of the browsers that supported the techniques included any version of IE and even though I went to great pains to explain that up front and talk about using these to enhance designs, the post caused quite a lot of heated discussion around using anything that doesn’t work in the browser that “everyone” is using. Here’s a typical comment in that vein:

While not developing for IE may work for you, most clients I’ve had still use IE. I do think if people start using these new techniques in sites it may help push IE to support the new techniques, yet I won’t be able to use them until they work for my clients.

Overall, the comments were positive, though, and I hope that the article will get some good discussions started around Web designers supporting a Web browser that seems hell bent on not supporting Web design.

Read the article »

Tags: CSS, Web Design by jason
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I’m underway writing my next book, Fluid Web Typography: A Guide , which will be out this fall. As with Speaking in Styles: The Fundamentals of CSS for Web Designers , I’ll be doing the layout myself. I got some input on the cover, but it’s not completely mine this time.

I’ve been collecting a lot of Web sites to use in the new book to show off the best in Web typography, but I’m looking for more. If you have a site you are particularly proud of, or can suggest one, take a look at my criteria below, and then add a comment after this article with a link to the site or (if you want to keep it private) use my contact form to send me the link.

What I’m looking for:

1. Good use of typography in an attractive Web design (obviously). This includes typefaces, contrast, scale, motion, rhythm, and composition.
2. Use of fonts other than the core Web fonts. Anyone using fonts from the Web-safe fonts list or using @font-face to download fonts would be best.
3. No or limited use of type in images. I want to concentrate on typography set using text in HTML.
4. No or limited use of Flash for typography. Some Flash for videos is OK, but I’m not looking for typography in Flash
5. Recent. The newer the better.

The sites I get that fit my criteria will be considered for use in Fluid Web Typography and receive a copy of the book when it comes out.

Tags: CSS, Typography, Web Design, Writing by jason
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A little present to brighten up your dull Monday morning. I’ve created a new desktop wall paper listing the 62 cross-OS Web safe fonts, based on my list of Web-safe fonts. These are the fonts that are most likely to be on both Mac and Windows computers, making them prime candidates for incorporating into your Web designs. And you can now have them all at your fingertips.

To use, just find the font(s) that best suites your needs, add them to your font family list in your CSS:

font-family: "Franklin Gothic Book", helvetica, arial, sans-serif;

and sit back and watch the typographic yumminess. if the person viewing your site has that font installed (which is likely but not guaranteed) their browser will use it. Otherwise, the design falls back to the other fonts in the list.

I’ve created the desktop for a variety of monitor resolution, so choose the one that best fits yours:

• SiS-Desktop_1280×800
• SiS-Desktop_1280×1024
• SiS-Desktop_1400×1050
• SiS-Desktop_1440×900
• SiS-Desktop_1600×1200
• SiS-Desktop_1680×1050
• SiS-Desktop_2048×1536

If you find the list useful, please make sure and spread the word.

Tags: CSS, Typography, Web Design, Web Development by jason
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It’s finally here! My new book, Speaking in Styles: Fundamentals of CSS for Web Designers, is ready for purchase from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Borders. I wrote it for designers who want to learn how to describe their Web work without having to get bogged down in all of the jargon. It’s a simple, straight-forward approach that I’ve used with great success in classes I’ve taught over the past couple of years.

From the introduction:

I wrote this book for designers of all stripes—visual, interactive, user experience, information architecture. However, it is really for anyone who wants to learn how to use CSS.

Speaking in Styles is split into three sections and includes three appendixes:

• Part 1: A Web Primer
  Defines what makes a Web page, introduces some tools you will need to build one, and dispels some popular myths about designers and CSS.
• Part 2: CSS Grammar
  Covers the nuts and bolts of how to create style sheets and apply them to a Web page, including the important vocabulary designers need to know.
• Part 3: Speaking Like a Native
  Follows the creation of a simple Web page design, emphasizing the best practices you should use.
• Appendixes
  Includes all of the code for Part 3; the length, font, and color values you use with CSS; and a list of common fixes for dealing with the bugs in Internet Explorer.

Want to win a copy?

Speaking in Styles

To celebrate the publication, I have 3 copies to give away today. Be either the first, fifth or tenth person to tweet a link to this page with the code #SISContest01, and I will send you a copy of Speaking In Styles. It’s that easy. I’ll check the key word #SISContest01 to find the winners. Only one tweet per person will be counted, my tweets are not counted, and the judge’s decisions (mine) are final.

Tags: CSS, Excerpt, publishing by jason
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