[benbacardi]

I was reading the article in Marc's thread about Web Misunderstandards, and saw his mention of sIFR, what are people's thoughts on this? Is it something that we can feasibly use?

For those of you who can't be bothered to click the sIRF link:

Quote

Over the last several months, a small group of web developers and designers have been hard at work perfecting a method to insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics.

[TJSingleton]

sFIR is pretty awesome stuff.

[marcamos]

I've personally used it (about 8 months ago) on www.eons.com, and I quite enjoyed the possibilities it made available. I'd use it again, in a heartbeat.

[Karl Buckland]

I suppose if you really want to use particular fonts for something then it's fair enough, but for your main content you still need to use one of the more common fonts, so I guess you're still quite limited.

[James Mitchell]

Yeah I'll use it when the situation calls for it. More than likely in heading situations. However, I agree with Sirkent that for main content the common fonts is the way to go.

But I also don't think that sIFR was meant for nor is being used for main content as a whole.

[benbacardi]

Does it require the font you want to be on the server?

[marcamos]

benbacardi, on Mar 1 2007, 12:53 PM, said:

Does it require the font you want to be on the server?

Not the font itself, per say, but the font you want does get embedded into the flash that is used.

[benbacardi]

So how does it work? Where, and when, do you specify the font you want to use?

[Catalyst]

You package the font up in a Flash file so you don't need the font on the server, just whatever machine you're building your Flash on.

[Billydakid]

Hi guys.

sIFR is a very useful tool, especially commercial-wise when dealing with clients who have their own fonts of which are essential to their identity.
sIFR provides anti-aliased rendering of those fonts, and is ideal for headers with the option of being able to dynamically render fonts without having to create images for each and every case.

However, it shouldn't be over used. the general rule is use it as little as possible (3 or 4 times per page max).
But this goes without saying really as you wouldn't want to use it too much anyway.

I did come across a major problem though which I'd like to share with you all.

When faced with using sIFR and a PNG fix for IE (whereby you're importing some JavaScript to render the alpha channels for drop shadows), you may find that the sIFR actually breaks the PNG fix.
The long-winded work around would've have been to write my own PNG fix as the original rips out everything on the page and replaces it, instead of only doing so on the required areas.
So I had to check out the beta of the latest version (and I normally don't touch betas, even if she's wearing a rather short skirt and long black boots with high heels - ooohhhhhhh matron!!!). The fun didn't stop there as it was now unstable and buggy, so I then resorted to nightly builds to find one that worked alongside the IE PNG fix.

Anyway, it all worked out well in the end.
Apologies if I may have got some of the above wrong or mixed up, I'm well hung....over and have run outta beer!
If anybody would like to send me a nurse and some beers, I'd be most grateful :-D
I promise I won't beta with my stick! Get it?!!!
Oh never mind, I'll get my coat.


Hope this was of some interest to you all.

This post has been edited by Billydakid: 02 March 2007 - 05:22 PM

[Karl Buckland]

Thanks and welcome Billy, you seem... somehow... familiar? You should introduce yourself in the New Members forum.

[Billydakid]

Sirkent, on Mar 2 2007, 10:44 PM, said:

Thanks and welcome Billy, you seem... somehow... familiar? You should introduce yourself in the New Members forum.

Thanks Sirk.

I've done just that.


Back to business....
I also came across swfIR which looks pretty cool: http://www.swfir.com/examples/elastic/

This is something I'd prolly not bother to use at all, however it's still a pretty handy solution.

[Catalyst]

Huh, that's pretty cool. I just had someone ask me about scaling the art on a page.

[william]

Billydakid, on Mar 2 2007, 10:17 PM, said:

I promise I won't beta with my stick! Get it?!!!

Awesome

Swifr sounds great, will have to look into this.

[TJSingleton]

Billydakid, on Mar 3 2007, 03:44 AM, said:

Thanks Sirk.

I've done just that.
Back to business....
I also came across swfIR which looks pretty cool: http://www.swfir.com/examples/elastic/

This is something I'd prolly not bother to use at all, however it's still a pretty handy solution.

I've got another technique I learned from Andy Clarke. I'll put together an example and post later.

[Ryan Fait]

I think it's quite cool. I have Flash turned off in my browser, though, so it's quite annoying when there are no headers visible on a site. Until I can afford to get a MacBook Pro, but my four year old PowerBook just can't handle Flash. I think Macromedia and Adobe are partly to blame for the poor resources handling, however.