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programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
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Although I'm no fan of MacromediaAdobe Flash, I have to admit the sIFR JavaScript / Flash typography hack is remarkably well thought out and quite effective. Here's a small GIF movie of it in action:
It always bugged me that our only alternative for decent web typeface rendering was the misconceived <font> tag, or even worse, a bunch of hand-constructed image files masquerading as text. This is the best solution I've seen so far. It's in use on a few high-profile sites such as ABC News; check out the headline for this ABC News article on Don Ho, for example.
Heck, it's almost enough to get me to enable Flash again. Almost.
Mike Davidson, the original progenitor of the sIFR technique, recently handed the reins of development for sIFR to Mark Wubben, who is working on sIFR 3.
Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions
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I think the technique is good, but has some flaws:
1. You can't select text properly.
2. The anti-aliasing used is rubbish. The text looks blurred in places. This is a big step backwards - I notice the bad AA before I notice the nice font.
Macromedia could fix Flash so it renders text better - perhaps using the platform's own text rendering - though perhaps Flash allows some funky things with text which aren't normally available with the native renderer.
Rik Hemsley on December 23, 2005 05:10 AMRik:
1. The text is fully selectable... either with drag select or select all. Visual feedback can be a little weird but it works just fine.
2. The anti-aliasing isn't as good as OS X, but it's better than Windows in my opinion. Hell, most Windows machines don't anti-alias at all. And by the way, Flash 8 has a new anti-aliasing algorithm which improves things significantly.
Mike D. on December 23, 2005 01:42 PM> The anti-aliasing used is rubbish
I had forgotten about this, but you're right. I don't mind it too much on the larger headline fonts, but it's one reason why smallish Flash text was always so painful to read.
Why does Flash have such hideous anti-aliasing? Isn't AA kind of a known science by now?
Jeff Atwood on December 23, 2005 09:05 PMYou gotta give props to Shaun Inman (the I in sIFR). He's the original developer of IFR, which was the real original progenitor to sIFR.
http://www.shauninman.com/plete/2004/04/inman-flash-replacement-an-fir-alternative
Jon Galloway on December 24, 2005 12:59 AMI clicked that link, and now I can't stop obsessing over the hideous anti-aliasing on the replaced fonts.
I didn't notice it on the large 24+ point headlines in the sample (eg, the GIF movie I made). But it's driving me nuts on Shaun Inman's site, where it is used all over the place for relatively small text.
gg Flash. That is bleed-from-the-eyes material there. It looks WAY better with Flash disabled. Don't believe me? Try it yourself.
Jeff Atwood on December 24, 2005 04:30 AMPretty useless hack, IMHO.
From that website:
"Those who have JavaScript turned on but the required version of the Flash plug-in turned off will see neither the original <h1> or the styled-text of the replaced movie. "
Well what the hell is the point then?!? I like JS and don't like Flash.
foobar on December 25, 2005 08:04 PMThe anti-aliasing makes me feel drunk...er;)
| Content (c) 2008 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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