“Real type” on the web

[ktinkel]

Type designer Sumner Stone has set up a web publication called Alphabet Farm Journal. The link is to an article that shows his fonts in use, captured in a GIF file.

Then the plain text is posted several inches lower on the page, out of sight unless you scroll down to it (or view the source file).

Now we have all learned that text in images is a no-no. It makes things difficult for those who rely on screen readers (not to mention the spiders and robots that spread the word about web sites). Most of these mechanical crawlers consider hidden text to be suspect, but in this case it is not really hidden. And since they cannot “read” images, they shouldn’t even perceive it as doubled.

But I can see some uses, like this one. For a designer of text types, this method does allow specimens to appear at appropriate (text) sizes. I think the image could be better — it has a sort of foggy quality. But that raises the other issue, the size of the image; that is more of a problem for those on dial-up connections, but no one likes to wait for an image to load.

Anyway, Stone is a superb type designer. He put together the Adobe type group from 1984 and oversaw the research and design behind Rob Slimbach’s Adobe Garamond. He designed the three-style Stone family, designed to be tolerant (or better) of low-resolution output, directed the ITC Bodoni project, and has created several other fonts — including what may be the very best slab serif display family, Silica; as well as the new ITC Stone Humanist Sans (which you can see at his Stone Type Foundry web site).

Meanwhile, his trick may be useful to someone else.

[Stephen Owades]

Originally Posted by ktinkel

Type designer Sumner Stone has set up a web publication called Alphabet Farm Journal. The link is to an article that shows his fonts in use, captured in a GIF file.

Then the plain text is posted several inches lower on the page, out of sight unless you scroll down to it (or view the source file).

Now we have all learned that text in images is a no-no. It makes things difficult for those who rely on screen readers (not to mention the spiders and robots that spread the word about web sites). Most of these mechanical crawlers consider hidden text to be suspect, but in this case it is not really hidden. And since they cannot “read” images, they shouldn’t even perceive it as doubled.

But I can see some uses, like this one. For a designer of text types, this method does allow specimens to appear at appropriate (text) sizes. I think the image could be better — it has a sort of foggy quality. But that raises the other issue, the size of the image; that is more of a problem for those on dial-up connections, but no one likes to wait for an image to load.

Anyway, Stone is a superb type designer. He put together the Adobe type group from 1984 and oversaw the research and design behind Rob Slimbach’s Adobe Garamond. He designed the three-style Stone family, designed to be tolerant (or better) of low-resolution output, directed the ITC Bodoni project, and has created several other fonts — including what may be the very best slab serif display family, Silica; as well as the new ITC Stone Humanist Sans (which you can see at his Stone Type Foundry web site).

Meanwhile, his trick may be useful to someone else.

It seems to me that Mr. Stone would be better served by creating a PDF version of his page and linking to it from a text version. This would take advantage of the superior rendering capabilities of Acrobat, especially when Adobe's CoolType technology (similar to Microsoft's ClearType) is used on an LCD screen. At best, a GIF image like the one he posted is going to look "foggy" compared with the best native rendering of a system employing such a sub-pixel scheme. And a PDF allows the viewer to choose a size appropriate to the resolution of the display, and even to zoom in to view the letter-forms more closely.

If he wants to be sure that the page will be Google-crawlable, he can create a complete text version that offers the PDF link as an option; this would also make the longer download time for the image version optional rather than mandatory for those with slow connections.

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Stephen Owades

It seems to me that Mr. Stone would be better served by creating a PDF version of his page and linking to it from a text version.

He actually does that — the type specimens are PDFs, at least some of them are.

Originally Posted by Stephen Owades

At best, a GIF image like the one he posted is going to look "foggy" compared with the best native rendering of a system employing such a sub-pixel scheme.

True. But he could try using a JPEG. The band-width problem would still be there, however.

Originally Posted by Stephen Owades

If he wants to be sure that the page will be Google-crawlable, he can create a complete text version that offers the PDF link as an option; this would also make the longer download time for the image version optional rather than mandatory for those with slow connections.

That would be kludgey, especially if the purpose of the text is only or mainly to show off the font!

Mind you, I can think of many reasons (besides fuzzy type and band-width considerations) not to do this, among them usability problems for people who need either to drastically enlarge text to read it on the screen or those who cannot read at all and depend upon screen readers. Not sure how screen readers respond to his page, in fact.

He makes wonderful type, though; and I do appreciate his frustration with trying to display it in text sizes on-screen.

[Stephen Owades]

Of course, a PDF page can be printed out, which allows the user to see what it will look like in print. And I don't see how the GIF page with text below achieves anything that a PDF linked from the text doesn't. A GIF isn't inherently "foggy"; in fact, a JPEG of type is likely to look worse. But any image file can (a) only look right at one size, with no zooming-in allowed for high-res screens; (b) only have sharp (but jagged) pixels or use simple anti-aliasing, not take advantage of the sub-pixel rendering features of CoolType or ClearType; and (c) not be printed at a quality better than that shown on-screen. I think an image--and a GIF is fine for this--is a good idea for showing the barest "teaser" sampling of a typeface, as he does on his catalog page. If he wants people to see how it looks in action, a linked PDF is the right answer.

[LoisWakeman]

Originally Posted by ktinkel

Not sure how screen readers respond to his page, in fact.

You can get a rough idea of the SR content by turning off images, and asking your browser to ignore fonts and colours (that is, effectively ignoring styles).

See below for a sample in FireFox.

Or for UNIX/PC users, you can download Lynx from http://lynx.isc.org/current/ (look for the Win32 binaries lower down the page). Lynx is a text browser and hides all the extraneous stuff from the page. What it (and the other method) doesn't do well is simulate the different kinds of emphasis you can, apparently, get a screen reader to apply: e.g. speaking louder for bold

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by LoisWakeman

You can get a rough idea of the SR content by turning off images, and asking your browser to ignore fonts and colours (that is, effectively ignoring styles).

Thanks — it appears that it just skips right to the text, having no use for images at all.

[Steve Rindsberg]

I don't understand the silly game of hiding the text way down the page the way he's done here. Hasn't he heard of ALT text? Considering how the SEI wannaGURUbes emphasize the importance of including it, I'd guess that there's at least some evidence that Google and the like pay attention to it, possibly more closely than to text on the page. Certainly they won't penalize it.

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

I don't understand the silly game of hiding the text way down the page the way he's done here. Hasn't he heard of ALT text? Considering how the SEI wannaGURUbes emphasize the importance of including it, I'd guess that there's at least some evidence that Google and the like pay attention to it, possibly more closely than to text on the page. Certainly they won't penalize it.

Actually, I have heard that ALT text is downplayed. As is text styled as DISPLAY: NONE.

But who knows? Google (and its competitors) change their rules all the time.

However, straight text definitely out-ranks ALT and hidden text. So far. Lately, anyway.

[Steve Rindsberg]

That's the trouble with SEO strategies and Wonderland. Things change so. Most of them are based on scamming Google in one way or another and omit two important considerations:

1) Google has lots of people working on it and their people are probably a lot smarter than the scammers.

2) Google doesn't LIKE being scammed. It definitely seems that they'll pound you if they catch you at it. And (see #1 above) they will.

What amazes me more once I thought about it a bit was that the idea of using images in place of text seems to have come to Stone as a sudden revelation. A WebVirgin maybe? Missed the last ten years somehow? People have been using images for type since five minutes after they discovered that they could use images. ;-)

[ktinkel]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

What amazes me more once I thought about it a bit was that the idea of using images in place of text seems to have come to Stone as a sudden revelation. A WebVirgin maybe? Missed the last ten years somehow? People have been using images for type since five minutes after they discovered that they could use images. ;-)

I was surprised at his wonderment myself, but I think he is a web virgin.

Few try to present so much text as image.