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

Slide 1: Beautiful Web Typography  tips on de-sucking the web Simon Pascal Klein

Slide 2: Web Typography 1 Introduction

Slide 3: Web Typography 2 I’m Pascal Klein

Slide 4: 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 sounds interesting at the time on klepas.org.

Slide 5: 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.

Slide 6: Web Typography 5 The Intertubes today Lots of information. Typography exists to bring order to information by dividing and organizing – aiding readers in finding what they are looking for.

Slide 7: Web Typography 6 “Typography is not picking a ‘cool’ font.” – Jeff Cro

Slide 8: Web Typography 7  tips to de-suck the web

Slide 9: 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.

Slide 10: 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.

Slide 11: 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.

Slide 12: 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.

Slide 13: 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.

Slide 14: Web Typography 13 .. 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: 12px in ems is 1.2em, 8px is 0.8em. Remember this only holds up for direct child elements of the body; nested elements will be relative to their parents.

Slide 15: Web Typography 14 .. Differences in browser rounding Browsers round decimal points in differing ways; 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.

Slide 16: 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. 72. 48, 60, 36, 24, 16, 18, 21, 11, 12, 14, 8, 9, 10, 6, 7, the “classic scale” 96. 64, 72, 48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 13, 14, 9, 10, 11, another scale 89. 55, 34, 21, 13, 8, scale based on the Fibonacci sequence

Slide 17: 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); • …?

Slide 18: Web Typography 17 3.1 Quotation marks & apostrophes ‘’ “” ’

Slide 19: Web Typography 18 '"

Slide 20: Web Typography 19 1'61"

Slide 21: Web Typography 20 "is is a group of words surrounded by a bunch of tick marks."

Slide 22: Web Typography 21 “is is a quotation!” - Jeff Cro

Slide 23: 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

Slide 24: 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.)”

Slide 25: Web Typography 24 . Advanced: hanging punctuation (cont’d) Easily done with lists by just setting their margins to zero (which if you’re using the reset stylesheet should be done for you). Possible for opening punctuation marks using background-image or a negative text-indent. CSS3 will hopefully support hanging punctuation with the proposed hanging-punctuation property. [http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#hanging-punctuation]

Slide 26: 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.

Slide 27: Web Typography 26 . Select a good measure (cond’t) An apt measure for running text ranges from about 45-75 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.

Slide 28: 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.

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Slide 31: 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.

Slide 32: 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;;

Slide 33: Web Typography 32 . e little things (cond’t) • Don’t forget to set an ample 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); • High-contrasting link colours in running text distract: use the small effective difference;

Slide 34: 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.

Slide 35: Web Typography 34 . I lied – one more Please don’t use Comic Sans unless you have a very, very good reason. …and on that note: Papyrus is a scribe’s Comic Sans.

Slide 36: ISBN: ---

Slide 37: Web Typography KLEPAS@KLEPAS.ORG Other reading & references • http://webtypography.net • http://alistapart.com/topics/design/typography • http://usabletype.org • http://ilovetypography.com Ta.

Slide 38: Web Typography KLEPAS@KLEPAS.ORG Inspirational type nuts • http://cameronmoll.com • http://jeffcro.com • http://zeldman.com • http://markboulton.co.uk