Beautiful Web Typography: 7 tips on de-sucking the web

Beautiful Web Typography  tips on de-sucking the web Simon Pascal Klein

Web Typography 1 Introduction

Web Typography 2 I’m Pascal Klein

Web Typography 3 I...

Web Typography 3 I... • work for a small web-dev company based in Canberra and also operate on a free-lance basis;

Web Typography 3 I... • work for a small web-dev company based in Canberra and also operate on a free-lance basis; • try to use, and support Open Source soware;

Web Typography 3 I... • work for a small web-dev company based in Canberra and also operate on a free-lance basis; • try to use, and support Open Source soware; • write about typography and whatever else strikes me at the time on klepas.org.

Web Typography 4

Web Typography 4 What is typography?

Web Typography 4 What is typography? ty•pog•ra•phy |tīˈpägrəfē| •n Typography is the art of creating and setting type with the purpose of honoring the text it sets.

Web Typography 4 serif sans-serif

Web Typography 4 e diﬀerence serif sans-serif

Web Typography 5 e Intertubes today

Web Typography 5 e Intertubes today Lots of information.

Web Typography 5 e Intertubes today Lots of information. Information Architecture deals with this primarily but there is another:

Web Typography 5 e Intertubes today Lots of information. Information Architecture deals with this primarily but there is another: Typography.

Web Typography 5

Web Typography 5 Typography exists to bring order to information by dividing and organizing – aiding readers in ﬁnding what they are looking for.

Web Typography 6 “Typography is not picking a ‘cool’ font.” – Jeﬀ Cro

Web Typography 7  tips to de-suck the web

Web Typography 8 . Starting out: reset All the browsers have their own default styling for various ( X ) HTML elements. is makes it a pain for cross-browser consistency.

Web Typography 8 . Starting out: reset All the browsers have their own default styling for various ( X ) HTML elements. is makes it a pain for cross-browser consistency. Fix? Simply reset everything.

Web Typography 9 body,div,dl,dt,dd,ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,fieldset,in put,textarea,p,blockquote,th,td {margin:0;padding:0;} table {border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;} fieldset,img {border:0;} address,caption,cite,code,dfn,em,strong,th,var {font- style:normal;font-weight:normal;} ol,ul {list-style:none;} caption,th {text-align:left;} h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {font-size:100%;font-weight:normal;} q:before,q:after {content:'';} abbr,acronym {border:0;} Googling “CSS reset stylesheets” should land you with numerous examples. is one above is from the Yahoo! UI library.

Web Typography 10 . Font sizing Font sizing is done using font-size. It uses any of the CSS numerical measurements and is either done in absolute or relative terms. Sizing in pixels is absolute whilst sizing in ems or percentages are an example of relative terms.

Web Typography 11 . Use ems An em is a relative unit best to be thought of as a box. It is relative to the point size of a speciﬁc font (i.e.  em in a  point typeface is  point).

Web Typography 11 . Use ems An em is a relative unit best to be thought of as a box. It is relative to the point size of a speciﬁc font (i.e.  em in a  point typeface is  point). To calculate, ﬁnd what one pixel is in ems and then multiply by the desired font size (in pixels): 1 ÷ parent font-size × required pixel value = em value

Web Typography 11 . Use ems An em is a relative unit best to be thought of as a box. It is relative to the point size of a speciﬁc font (i.e.  em in a  point typeface is  point). To calculate, ﬁnd what one pixel is in ems and then multiply by the desired font size (in pixels): 1 ÷ parent font-size × required pixel value = em value Note this means sizing in ems can easily have you using values with three decimal places.

Web Typography 12 .. e . trick Relative font sizes are either relative to the browser default font size (commonly  pixels) or their parent element. Consider: p { font-size: 80%; } blockquote { font-size: 80%; }

Web Typography 12 .. e . trick Relative font sizes are either relative to the browser default font size (commonly  pixels) or their parent element. Consider: p { font-size: 80%; } blockquote { font-size: 80%; } 80% of 16px is 12.8px, so p and blockquote elements will be that size, but what happens when we put a p element inside a blockquote element? e parent (blockquote) is 12.8px so the p will be rendered at 80% of that – 10.42px.

Web Typography  .. e . trick (cont’d) In 2004 Richard Rutter wrote an article outlining a trick used to make these calculations simpler: because browsers have a common default font size of 16px we can set the body font size to be 62.5%, resetting the default value to 10px. From here on, using ems is much easier: px in ems is .em, px is .em. Remember this only holds up for direct child elements of the body; nested elements will be relative to their parents.

Web Typography 14 .. Diﬀerences in browser rounding

Web Typography 14 .. Diﬀerences in browser rounding Make sure your actual font size in absolute terms is either an integer or half-way in between (i.e. 13px, 13.5px or 14px).

Web Typography 14 .. Diﬀerences in browser rounding Make sure your actual font size in absolute terms is either an integer or half-way in between (i.e. 13px, 13.5px or 14px). To ﬁnd an element’s font size in absolute terms (i.e. pixels) you can use the Firefox Web Develop Extension, Information → Display Element Information.

Web Typography 15 . Stick it to a scale Use a scale when setting type. Find what suits you best for a given project and stick to it. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72. the “classic scale” 9, 10, 11, another scale 24,12, 13, 14, 18, 36, 48, 64, 72, 96. 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, scale based on the Fibonacci sequence 89.

Web Typography 16 . Use Smartypants or similar Smartypants is a script that translates plain ASCII punctuation characters into “smart” typographic punctuation HTML entities. • Smartypants (PHP, PERL, & Movable Type); • Typogrify (Python/Django); • wp-typogrify (WordPress); • …?

Web Typography 17 . Quotation marks & apostrophes ‘’ “” ’

Web Typography 18 ' "

Web Typography 19 1'61"

Web Typography 20 "is is a group of words surrounded by a bunch of tick marks."

Web Typography 21 “is is a quotation!” - Jeﬀ Cro

Web Typography 22 . Dashes

Web Typography 22 . Dashes - hyphen Mary-Anne, Dominique Strauss-Kahn – en dash April–May, ages –, pp. – — em dash Phrase marker—not spaced—like this.* – minus 5–4=1

Web Typography 23 . Advanced: hanging punctuation Traditionally punctuation marks, bullets, lists, hyphens, and brackets all hang in the margin. “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Integer a odio. Vivamus placerat felis id risus. Cras mollis est. Suspendisse molestie imperdiet libero. Etiam mollis libero vulputate lorem. Nullam ut leo. (Etiam at turpis non massa rhoncus sodales.)”

Web Typography 24 . Advanced: hanging punctuation (cont’d) Easily done with lists by just setting their margins to zero. Possible for opening punctuation marks using background-image or a negative text-indent. CSS 3 will hopefully support hanging punctuation with the proposed hanging-punctuation property. [http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#hanging-punctuation]

Web Typography 25 . Select a good measure e measure is the length of a single line. It is important to select a good measure for running text. Do this with the width property. Ideally these should be relative to the font size, such that the type scales proportionately to the measure; use ems or percentages.

Web Typography 26 . Select a good measure (cond’t) An apt measure for running text ranges from about - characters for serif type set in a single column on a page (print). On the web, type generally beneﬁts from a smaller measure. When using multi-column you’ll need to go even smaller.

Web Typography 26 . Select a good measure (cond’t) An apt measure for running text ranges from about - characters for serif type set in a single column on a page (print). On the web, type generally beneﬁts from a smaller measure. When using multi-column you’ll need to go even smaller. Characters average at around two thirds of an em, so a width of  to  ems matches the above.

Web Typography 27 . Treat text as part of the UI Distinguish content elements from application controls (i.e. a user’s username and description from a logout link or text-ﬁeld title). Oen done with colour (i.e. setting controls gray), size (making them smaller) and typefaces.

Web Typography 28

Web Typography 29

Web Typography 30 . Use grids Grids bring order to your page and help specify where things should go and their ﬂow. Remember to put in apt “gutters” (margins between columns) to separate your columns particularly when neighbouring columns hold running text. Ruler guides help enormously – use the Web Developer extension for Firefox or ruler background images. Also see the YUI library.

Web Typography 30

Web Typography 31 . e little things

Web Typography 31 . e little things • Setting the body in a serif and headings in a san serif or visa-versa work to great eﬀect;

Web Typography 31 . e little things • Setting the body in a serif and headings in a san serif or visa-versa work to great eﬀect; • Set abbr and acronym elements in small caps (using the font-variant property);

Web Typography 31 . e little things • Setting the body in a serif and headings in a san serif or visa-versa work to great eﬀect; • Set abbr and acronym elements in small caps (using the font-variant property); • For headings use the most stylish ampersand available (Typogrify wraps them with .amp);

Web Typography 31 . e little things • Setting the body in a serif and headings in a san serif or visa-versa work to great eﬀect; • Set abbr and acronym elements in small caps (using the font-variant property); • For headings use the most stylish ampersand available (Typogrify wraps them with .amp); • At small font sizes text-decoration: underline; can render descender characters (g, j, p, q, y) diﬃcult to read – use border-bottom: 1px solid;;

Web Typography 32 . e little things (cond’t) • Don’t forget to set an ample leading (line height) for running text! Done using the line-height property and you can use a unit-less number (i.e. . which acts as a multiplier of the font size (em if you’re font sizing in ems); e leading spans from the baseline (don’t worry about descenders or ascenders.

Web Typography 33 . e little things (cond’t) • Don’t be afraid to mark new paragraphs with indents, outdents, a plain white-line, a pilcrow (¶) or other ornament, drop cap and/or headers;

Web Typography 33 . e little things (cond’t) • Don’t be afraid to mark new paragraphs with indents, outdents, a plain white-line, a pilcrow (¶) or other ornament, drop cap and/or headers; • Generally use ﬂush-le (text-align: left;) for running text, particularly when set in a narrow measure – justiﬁcation can work at ample measures and better with serif typefaces.

Web Typography 33 . e little things (cond’t) • Don’t be afraid to mark new paragraphs with indents, outdents, a plain white-line, a pilcrow (¶) or other ornament, drop cap and/or headers; • Generally use flush-le (text-align: left;) for running text, particularly when set in a narrow measure – justification can work at ample measures and better with serif typefaces. • High-contrasting link colours in running text distract: use the smallest effective difference;

Web Typography 34 . I lied – one more

Web Typography 34 . I lied – one more Please don’t use Comic Sans unless you have a very, very good reason.

Web Typography 25 Free desktop speciﬁc Stick fonts into ~/.fonts To reload your font cache: fc-cache -fv Generally use a serif for printed type; make sure you grab a copy of the Liberation font package from Redhat! [https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/]

ISBN : ---

Web Typography KLEPAS @ KLEPAS . ORG Other reading & references • http://webtypography.net • http://alistapart.com/topics/design/typography • http://usabletype.org • http://ilovetypography.com Ta.

Web Typography KLEPAS @ KLEPAS . ORG Inspirational type nuts • http://cameronmoll.com • http://jeﬀcro.com • http://zeldman.com • http://markboulton.co.uk

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Beautiful Web Typography: 7 tips on de-sucking the web

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