Web Devs: Dynamic fonts in web pages :)

[screw3d]

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

I think this is a pretty good way without resorting to images or CSS image replacement techniques (which has several shortcomings).

It uses Flash, but will degrade nicely to HTML tags if Flash is not installed.. this is probably the best solution I've seen so far Please don't misuse it though (OMGCOMICSANSMS!!!!)

One issue that I care about which is addressed in that page.. you cannot middle-click or do any other things that you can normally do with a link - so I guess just use it for non-linked text if possible.

.. and.. you get this annoying adblock tab on every flash object on the page

 

[notfred]

It's cool, but it's not exactly new.

Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text
August 29, 2004

I guess it's still worth posting for those who haven't seen it, though.

 

[screw3d]

Originally posted by: notfred
It's cool, but it's not exactly new.

Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text
August 29, 2004

I guess it's still worth posting for those who haven't seen it, though.

yes, but this is sFIR 2.0

 

[WannaFly]

screw3d, thanks for the neat link - never seen this before. I personally think its a horrible idea, though.

 

[screw3d]

Originally posted by: WannaFly
screw3d, thanks for the neat link - never seen this before. I personally think its a horrible idea, though.

Care to elaborate? I can think a few myself.. but I'd like to know what the "common" folks think about this

 

[WannaFly]

screw3d, does that mean I'm "common" folk?! They have a sample on their page. The XHTML version is 8.4K, the Flash, with the required flash files would be about 30KB - thats for 2 measly little uses of this dynamic font. I'm not a very big fan of flash, it has its purposes, but this is not one of them, IMHO. Not to mention flash isnt accepted everywhere -we dont allow it here at my work. I wouldnt want my page looking like the xHTML rendered sample, it looks like crap. Overall, a neat use - just no purpose.

 

[screw3d]

Originally posted by: WannaFly
screw3d, does that mean I'm "common" folk?! They have a sample on their page. The XHTML version is 8.4K, the Flash, with the required flash files would be about 30KB - thats for 2 measly little uses of this dynamic font. I'm not a very big fan of flash, it has its purposes, but this is not one of them, IMHO. Not to mention flash isnt accepted everywhere -we dont allow it here at my work. I wouldnt want my page looking like the xHTML rendered sample, it looks like crap. Overall, a neat use - just no purpose.

I'm sorry.. didn't mean that I knew I had phrased that wrongly :frown:

yes, I do agree with you that the extra download will be crappy.. not to mention that it does take an extra moment to render all of it.. but I am thinking it's a compromise you have to make..

I think the nice part of this implementation is that you can always fallback on CSS-rendered headers if Flash is not available.. just style it however you want with CSS so it doesn't look like crap

 

[statik213]

what on earth are you complaing about the 30k?
The 30k is a one-time download.. unless ur using a browser that doesn't cache anything... i saw this a while ago and it's pretty neat... (haven't had to use it yet though)

The way this thing works is that the 30k (or whatever) flash file is downloaded once w/ the font/style info. You have special CSS classes for the text you want to replace w/ the funky flash text and your javascript then hides the text and slips in a flash movie wherever such text is needed passing the text as a parameter to the flash applet...

I mean, people would easily go over that 30k trying to get this effect w/ image files, and usually they have seperate images for each page.

My only concern is that, if this is overused a page will end up becoming a drain on the processor as flash is not cheap. But seriously, the 30k is not the real problem.

But, somehow I don't see a bright future for this....
besides SVG is on the way and it should be able to do some of this stuff less expensively....

 

[screw3d]

Originally posted by: statik213
what on earth are you complaing about the 30k?
The 30k is a one-time download.. unless ur using a browser that doesn't cache anything... i saw this a while ago and it's pretty neat... (haven't had to use it yet though)

The way this thing works is that the 30k (or whatever) flash file is downloaded once w/ the font/style info. You have special CSS classes for the text you want to replace w/ the funky flash text and your javascript then hides the text and slips in a flash movie wherever such text is needed passing the text as a parameter to the flash applet...

I mean, people would easily go over that 30k trying to get this effect w/ image files, and usually they have seperate images for each page.

My only concern is that, if this is overused a page will end up becoming a drain on the processor as flash is not cheap. But seriously, the 30k is not the real problem.

But, somehow I don't see a bright future for this....
besides SVG is on the way and it should be able to do some of this stuff less expensively....

now that you've mentioned it.. I think one major advantage over image files is that you can just implement it once, and use it many times over as opposed to creating a single image for every time.