Oh what a happy day to be a Web Developer! Google has released their Google Font API and the Google Font Directory with a number of Open Source Fonts. Also released in cooperation with TypeKit is the WebFont Loader which helps the FOUT (Flash of Unstyled Content) which is an issue with how Firefox handles downloaded fonts ( for more on FOUT and why WebLoader is a good thing see Paul Irish’s Details on the New Google WebFont API).

All this is great as it make it a snap to use open source fonts, either the one’s Google hosts (fast download! easy!) or you use WebFont Loader to make it simple to add other Open Source Fonts such as some of the great ones offered by The League of Movable Type. If there are licensed fonts you want to use, I recommend looking into TypeKit‘s services.

CrossPlatform Rendering Issues in a NutShell

So now that the issue of web fonts is more or less solved, the next big issue is cross-platform font rendering. The best way to sum up the difference :

Mac: the goal of font rendering is to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.

Windows ClearType (Vista,Windows 7, anyone using IE7/8, and XP users smart enough to turn on ClearType): the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface. It is up to the font designers to build ClearType hinting into the font—without it the font may become illegible at small sizes.

Windows no anti-aliasing (XP default): pixels, pixels, pixels.

much of the above was paraphrased from a great post by Paul Irish: Font Rendering: Respecting The Pixel Grid

In practice this means that Windows users tend to think type on a Mac looks blurry and Mac users think that type on Windows looks jagged and crappy. Also, and more important is that a font needs to be hinted for Windows ClearType renderer or else at sizes under 20px it becomes ugly and often illegible at smaller sizes.

For a more detailed breakdown of how fonts are rendered check out this awesome font rendering chart by Miha.

What does this mean for the typefaces in the Google Font Directory?

So if you are a Mac user without a Windows box around you’ll mostly want to know which fonts are ugly/illegible at small sizes. I’ve taken a brief look at the fonts Google offers on my Windows PC here at work and came up with the following list. Note that some of these typefaces are meant as display only so they shouldn’t be used small anyway:

UPDATE: for a more complete chart with screenshots including Windows Standard Mode and no anti-aliasing check out Comparing Open Source Fonts – Part 2

Open Source Fonts Appearance With Windows ClearType

Open Source Fonts Appearance With a Mac

You’ll notice that I haven’t compiled a table like I did for Windows. That’s because Mac font rendering stays true to the font; thus, you can assume that display type fonts look bad at small sizes and fonts made for body text are good down to at least 12px. Also if you are on a Windows box you can easily see what it looks like on a Mac:  Download Safari and turn on it’s font smoothing (Preferences > Appearance > Font Smoothing > Light or Medium) which makes the font rendering behave (mostly) like a Mac.

*Inconsolata is a good example of a font not hinted for ClearType which looks ugly on Windows below 24px and becomes illegible at 14px; however, on a Mac it looks good even at 11px.

Rob Foster’s recent post /the/path/of/most/resistance is a brilliant write up on the inherent lacking of the visual file system. as he says:

…for the average person, the file system is so complex that everything outside of the desktop and the documents folder appears to be a vast labyrinth which most likely hides booby traps and minotaurs.

I think this is even true for many advanced users—even if they refuse to admit it. Even I have come to realize the more I have begun to use my iPhone, the more I see that I don’t need a file system for most of my tasks. I consider myself an experienced user and even I would love for the file system on my main computer to if not disappear at least further hide itself. Do I need to always have the system folder visible? No. Nor do I really need to see the applications folder as long as I can search and see a list. Actually come to think of it nor do I need the music folder or photos folder. A dedicated music/photo app does a better job sorting those file types then the I would manually creating folders.

The last point says it best. The visual file system is a generalist tool (like the CLI). We’ve moved away from the concept of sitting down to use a computer; instead now, we are sitting down to do a specific task: i.e., write a report, listen to music, post a tweet, check out facebook, watch a show, build a website, etc. The computer itself needs to get out of the stinking way so we can just do what we sit down to do. Having a global visual file system is just more clutter and doesn’t really help any of those tasks—not even webdev.

Yes you heard me: I do not need access to my computer’s file system to do web development. All I need is access to the project’s files on the server and a local store of the same, both of which I really only need to see when I’m in my IDE. I don’t really need to even know where this local store is as long as I can just click on the name of the project and it loads (like Coda and other IDEs). The local store could for all intents just be archive that opens when I open my IDE. Well there is the photoshop graphic editor issue but that could be easily solved by having a list of web projects show up when I “save to web.” You know how much time I’d save if I could just select from a project list whenever I “save to web” rather than have to dig around in my folders for where ever the images folder is for a certain website?

Speaking of, Panic please make an iPad version of Coda!

p.s. this brings to mind one of my gripes about Windows—fonts. To install fonts on OS X you click on it and then click install font. On Windows, even the new Windows 7, you have to copy it in the font folder (usually C:\Windows\Fonts), which is a granted not too hard but it’s still annoying to have to manually dig into the system folder to install a font.

Been in self tech support hell lately. A couple weeks ago, a power outage switched off my external drive in the middle of it being used which destroyed the file hierarchy. For various reasons it took about a week to recover all the data which didn’t live elsewheres. I restored the hard drive and copied everything back on to it.

Then just a couple days ago, my laptop froze up and then refused to boot again. I launched it in firewire target disk mode — which thankfully worked — attached it to Nifer’s machine, and backed up everything in my home folder to my external. Then I rebooted with a bootable DiskWarrior cd and set it to repair. This seemed to work. My machine booted, I immediately installed superduper and did a full clone of my laptop.

The next day, it froze again. I ran DiskWarrior again and it repaired a couple useless permissions but that was about it. Interestingly, it would boot in safe mode fine, but normal boots always resulted in either a generic lockup or this lovely corrupt stack kernel panic message:

Last night, I tried doing a fresh install of the operating system just in case. Unfortunately, the install process just errored out every time.

At this point, it’s looking like a hardware issue, so tonight I’ll run TechTool on it.

I’m glad I can do my own tech support, but I really wish I didn’t have to — I don’t have time for this.

UPDATE: TechTool was worthless as it said everything was peachy. I tried removing the one 3rd party RAM chip I have in there and sure enough that seems to have done the trick so far. Install completed fine and it loaded alright. Now I’m just restoring block-level from my superduper backup as I figure it wasn’t a software problem.

I’ll need to get some more RAM though as 256MB is just not enough. Interestingly it says lifetime warranty on the chip so I’ll have to look into that.

Um wow, just wow. What the hell were they thinking.

Microsoft’s new promotional site for MacOffice2008 was launched today (thanks to Daring Fireball for the heads up). Go ahead and visit. All you’ll see is a blank black page with a small footer bar.

“Why is there no content?” you might ask. Well cause the idiots built the entire thing in flash and didn’t bother to include any loading bars. But it worse than that: after the interface finally loads, the first page requires a 4+ MB download and then whenever you click any of the navigation along the top it also has an additional download of 3-11MBs per tab.

It’s the first day and most likely the site is getting slammed, and with those gigantor flash files that’s not a good thing for their poor server. My browser took over 10 minutes to load the damned thing. And now checking back, it’s completely hosed and none of the content is loading. I can’t even look at the pages I’ve seen before because the flash files are too huge for Firefox to bother keeping in it’s cache.

Correction: Oh hey that download crapout might actually my connection here at work. They recently lamely started throttling youtube traffic, and I just realized that it probably actually applies to all large flash files. As a result, the macoffice site doesn’t load for me. This doesn’t change the fact that an all flash informational site this size is still stupid.

It’s the worst example of a bloated Flash site I’ve ever seen. I can’t get exact figures since I can’t even reach it at the moment, but I’m guessing it all total it’s at least 50MBs — the size of a small application or an HD movie trailer.

We now have enough Apple gear at our house to be classified as an official House of Jobs Worship. On Sunday mornings, every lap is often bejeweled with a shiny brushed aluminum laptop, and the air is crisp with etheral wifi signals speeding to the airport altar. If there was any doubt of our cult status, the new iphones solidly put us over the edge.

It’s been a few days so far with the device, so I guess it’s time for a review…
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I got my laptop back on Wednesday. New hardrive, superdrive, and lcd screen all for the low low price of $0 thanks to the extended protection plan. Loaded it up to the tiger welcome screen. I would have mistaken it for a new machine if it wasn’t for all the scratches on the frame—things in my life tend to take a beating. If a well loved book shows its love through it’s broken spine, bent corners, and stained pages, then my laptop is well loved.

Now that I have my personal machine back, there’s a couple larger posts burning to get out of my brain. However they may have to wait considering that I have a test in my Cognitive Development class on monday, and I have to prepare for the NACHRI conference that I’m presenting at next week, and there’s also Saturday’sDustfish Massive party that can’t be missed.