Typography Resorces for attractive Website Design

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. A printed work which cannot be read becomes a product without purpose.

Web typography In order to “allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web”, he has “structured his website to step through Bringhurst’s working principles, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS”.
Five simple steps to better typography The kind of typography he is talking about “is not your typical ‘What font should I use’ typography.” A good read for those who believe websites are usable when leaving font size and line spacing to default while letting the text width expand to wherever.
Khoi Vinh Co-founder of behaviordesign. Currently design director at NYTimes.com. Extremely talented man.
Rod Graves Communication designer. Sublime work: “Typography is a definite focus for me. Typographic grids and hierarchies usually form the foundation of the visual languages I develop.”
A List Apart Communicating via typefaces. Fonts and layout. Designing for readers. Legibility. Typefaces, graphic design. Problems of typography on the web. Controlling web typography: size, font, color. CSS methods, browser problems, user problems, and workarounds. Make sure you read this article as well.
Association Typographique Internationale ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) is the premier worldwide organisation dedicated to type and typography. Founded in 1957, ATypI provides the structure for communication, information and action amongst the international type community.
Thinking with Type The on-line companion to the book Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students
Typetester Compare screen type
Typophile Typophile is a member and sponsor-supported community. Since 2000 Typophile has been guided by open collaboration and the idea that we’re all always learning. We they serve 3+ million pages monthly.
Typohile Wiki A user-created encyclopedia of all things type and design-related. Users create and edit Wiki entries with the aim of becoming a collaborative, useful, balanced and relevant resource.
The Next Big Thing in Online Type Bill Gates wants computer users, well, Microsoft users, to have a more enjoyable on-screen reading experience — so much so that he made improving reading on the screen one of his top five priorities.
Web typography In order to “allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web”, he has “structured his website to step through Bringhurst’s working principles, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS”.
Five simple steps to better typography The kind of typography he is talking about “is not your typical ‘What font should I use’ typography.” A good read for those who believe websites are usable when leaving font size and line spacing to default while letting the text width expand to wherever.
Khoi Vinh Co-founder of behaviordesign. Currently design director at NYTimes.com. Extremely talented man.
Rod Graves Communication designer. Sublime work: “Typography is a definite focus for me. Typographic grids and hierarchies usually form the foundation of the visual languages I develop.”
A List Apart Communicating via typefaces. Fonts and layout. Designing for readers. Legibility. Typefaces, graphic design. Problems of typography on the web. Controlling web typography: size, font, color. CSS methods, browser problems, user problems, and workarounds. Make sure you read this article as well.
Association Typographique Internationale ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) is the premier worldwide organisation dedicated to type and typography. Founded in 1957, ATypI provides the structure for communication, information and action amongst the international type community.
Thinking with Type The on-line companion to the book Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students
Typetester Compare screen type
Typophile Typophile is a member and sponsor-supported community. Since 2000 Typophile has been guided by open collaboration and the idea that we’re all always learning. We they serve 3+ million pages monthly.
Typohile Wiki A user-created encyclopedia of all things type and design-related. Users create and edit Wiki entries with the aim of becoming a collaborative, useful, balanced and relevant resource.
The Next Big Thing in Online Type Bill Gates wants computer users, well, Microsoft users, to have a more enjoyable on-screen reading experience — so much so that he made improving reading on the screen one of his top five priorities.
Web typography In order to “allay some of the myths surrounding typography on the web”, he has “structured his website to step through Bringhurst’s working principles, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS”.
Five simple steps to better typography The kind of typography he is talking about “is not your typical ‘What font should I use’ typography.” A good read for those who believe websites are usable when leaving font size and line spacing to default while letting the text width expand to wherever.
Khoi Vinh Co-founder of behaviordesign. Currently design director at NYTimes.com. Extremely talented man.
Rod Graves Communication designer. Sublime work: “Typography is a definite focus for me. Typographic grids and hierarchies usually form the foundation of the visual languages I develop.”
A List Apart Communicating via typefaces. Fonts and layout. Designing for readers. Legibility. Typefaces, graphic design. Problems of typography on the web. Controlling web typography: size, font, color. CSS methods, browser problems, user problems, and workarounds. Make sure you read this article as well.
Association Typographique Internationale ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) is the premier worldwide organisation dedicated to type and typography. Founded in 1957, ATypI provides the structure for communication, information and action amongst the international type community.
Thinking with Type The on-line companion to the book Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students
Typetester Compare screen type
Typophile Typophile is a member and sponsor-supported community. Since 2000 Typophile has been guided by open collaboration and the idea that we’re all always learning. We they serve 3+ million pages monthly.
Typohile Wiki A user-created encyclopedia of all things type and design-related. Users create and edit Wiki entries with the aim of becoming a collaborative, useful, balanced and relevant resource.
The Next Big Thing in Online Type Bill Gates wants computer users, well, Microsoft users, to have a more enjoyable on-screen reading experience — so much so that he made improving reading on the screen one of his top five priorities.

Source : Web Design is 95% Typography

50 Web design tips to Speed Up Site

There are all sorts of tips and tools included, from reducing the number of HTTP requests to compressing images and playing with caches. Here are six articles that I wrote on the topic some time ago (they were included on the list) :

1. Speed Up Your Site: Optimize Images
2. Speed Up Your Site: Image Formats
3. Speed Up Your Site: Optimize your CSS
4. Speed Up Your Site: Use a slash on your links
5. Speed Up Your Site: Use the height and width tags
6. Speed Up Your Site: Reduce the HTTP Requests

Source : 50 Tips to Speed Up Your Website

15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use

Originally written by Matthew Inman (Oatmeal)

After writing 5 HTML Elements You Probably Never Use (but perhaps should), I thought creating something similar for CSS was in order. These are all CSS level 2 properties but some of them don't work in all browsers, so make sure and test things out before putting them into use.

1. clip

clip: rect(5px, 40px, 45px, 5px)

From iBloom Studios

A good way to visualize the clip attribute is if you take a piece of paper with a rectangle cut out of it and place it on top of a photo (just like using a Photoshop layer mask). The area of the rectangular hole, allowing the layer behind it to show through, is what the clip property will specify.

They've got a lengthy article all about clip and some examples of it in use.


2. visibility

visibility: (inherit | visible | hidden)

From Macromedia

For practical purposes, the difference between these two properties [visibility and display] is that when you hide information using the visibility property, the browser creates the appropriate amount of space in the browser window for the information when the page loads. When you use the display property, space for the information is not created until the element becomes visible.


3. text-shadow

text-shadow: color, x-coordinate, y-coordinate, blur radius
text-shadow: #000000 10px -5px 1px

From Quirksmode:

The text-shadow declaration allows you to create a text shadow; i.e. a slightly moved, slightly blurred copy of a text.


4. content

content: "Your browser supports content"

Use this property with the :before and :after pseudo-elements to generate content around a CSS selector.

Careful with this one, it goes against the idea of separating content from presentation.

5. quotes

q { quotes: '"' '"' }

From htmldog

[quotes] specifies what form the quotes of the open-quote and close-quote values of the content property should take. Not supported by IE.

A List Apart endorses the revival of the tag using content

6. counter-reset and counter-increment

From the mozilla developer center

CSS counters are an implementation of Automatic counters and numbering in CSS 2.1. The value of a counter is manipulated through the use of counter-reset and counter-increment and is displayed
on a page using the counter() or counters() function of the content property.

body {
counter-reset: section; /* Set the section counter to 0 */
}
h1:before {
counter-increment: section; /* Increment the section counter */
content: "Section " counter(section) ": "; /* Display the counter */
}



7. marks

@page: { marks: ; }

From quackit.com

The CSS marks property is used to set crop marks and cross marks on paged media. This is used with the @page rule.


8. page-break-before and page-break-after

page-break-before: (always|auto|empty string|left|right);
page-break-after: (always|auto|empty string|left|right);

These two properties allow you to set the page-breaking behavior of an element when printing the document.

9. orphans and widows
orphans:
widows:

These two properties are used primarily in paged media to control line breaks by specifying the number of lines in a paragraph that should be left at the top (widows) or bottom (orphans) of a page.

About.com has a decent article about the CSS orphans property.

10. font-size-adjust
font-size-adjust: number

From w3schools:

The ratio between the height of the font's lowercase letter "x" and the height of the "font-size" is called a font's aspect value. If the aspect value is high, the font will be legible when it is set to a smaller size. For example: Verdana has an aspect value of 0.58 (means that when font size is 100 px, its x-height is 58 px). Times New Roman has an aspect value of 0.46. This means that Verdana is more legible at smaller sizes than Times New Roman.

The font-size-adjust property specifies an aspect value for an element that will preserve the x-height of the first-choice font.


11. font-stretch

font-stretch: (normal | wider | narrower | ultra-condensed | extra-condensed | condensed | semi-condensed | semi-expanded | expanded | extra-expanded | ultra-expanded | inherit)

From the W3C

The 'font-stretch' property selects a normal, condensed, or extended face from a font family. Absolute keyword values have the following ordering, from narrowest to widest:

1. ultra-condensed
2. extra-condensed
3. condensed
4. semi-condensed
5. normal
6. semi-expanded
7. expanded
8. extra-expanded
9. ultra-expanded



12. font-variant
font-variant: (normal | small-caps)

From w3schools

The font-variant property is used to display text in a small-caps font, which means that all the lower case letters are converted to uppercase letters, but all the letters in the small-caps font have a smaller font-size compared to the rest of the text.


13. caption-side

caption-side: (top | bottom | left | right)

This is used to define the position of a caption in a table.


14. table-layout

table-layout: (auto | fixed)

According to Quackit.com

The CSS table-layout property allows you to fix the table layout so that the table renders much faster.

Without the table-layout property, on large tables, users won't see any part of the table until the browser has rendered the whole table. This can give the impression that your page loads very slowly. On the other hand, if you use the table-layout property, users will see the top of the table while the browser loads and renders rest of the table. This gives the impression that the page loads a lot quicker.


15. empty-cells

empty-cells: (show | hide)

Quirksmode has a great explanation of empty-cells in Fun with Tables: which shows a side-by-side comparison of a bunch of CSS table properties and which browsers they are supported in.

Source / Please click at below URL to know about CSS
15 CSS Properties You Probably Never Use (but perhaps should)

Brief description of Web Accessibility

What exactly is Web Accessibility ?

Simply put, web accessibility is about making a site accessible to the largest range of people possible. For the majority of website owners, this is simply good business sense. After all, the more people you have using your site the better.

Making a website accessible involves removing potential barriers to access and one of the best ways of doing this is to build sites to 'web standards'.

Who does this affect ?

People often think that web accessibility relates only to people with physical disabilities. Although they are often most affected by poorly designed sites, accessibility is a much wider issue and at a fundamental level, affects us all.

* Blind, visually impaired and colour blind people are probably the most obvious
group of individuals affected by accessibility issues. This group also makes up
a very large percentage of web surfers
* People with physical disabilities, such as those with impaired mobility
* People surfing the web using mobile phones and PDA's. These people are possibly
the most affluent and technically advanced group of people suffering from web accessibility issues.
* People using old browsers or old computers. Many companies and organizations
have standardized on older browser versions and don't use the latest computer
equipment.
* People using slow internet connections.
* The 'Silver Surfer' is one of the largest growing markets on the web. This
sector has accessibility issues such as reduced mobility, reduced hand-eye
co-ordination and poor vision.
* Young Internet users can also have poor hand-eye co-ordination, coupled with a
low reading age.
* People who don't speak or understand English fluently.

The positive aspects of having an accessible website are:

* Ability to tap into affluent niche markets like the 'Silver Surfer' or people using PDA's and phones.
* The positive PR that comes from adopting a socially responsible attitude and complying with web best practices.
* Accessible websites are inherently more search engine friendly. After all, Google is the largest "blind user" on the web.
* Increased turnover from more people using your site.

The negative aspects of an inaccessible website are:

* You could be turning away large numbers of potential customers each day without even knowing it.
* When people have a positive experience of a website they generally don't tell people. But if they have a negative experience they are likely to tell everybody!
* Excluding people from your website can generate very negative PR.
* Your website might even find itself open to litigation.

Web accessibility is a broad issue and one that affects both web users and website owners.

Source / Read more about Web accessibility & its effects at

The Business Case for Web Accessibility

8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You're Stuck

Originally written by Matthew Inman (Oatmeal)

Web design can be incredibly frustrating. You'd think that with the infinite possibilities of what-goes-where it'd be pretty easy to land a design that works, yet somehow we've all been stuck before: working hour after hour on a design that refuses to look right. Throwing away pixels like they're going out of style.


These 8 tactics are what I use to get out of that sticky spot

Design from the inside out

A lot of designers start off a design by focusing on the header. Often times what's inside the page is what makes it look good; the header is supplementary. Try leaving the header alone for a while and working on some elements in the body, you'll be surprised at how much easier it is to design a page once you've got a solid body going.

Sketch something

My whiteboard is my salvation. Pencil and paper works too. I read an article years ago by a designer who would draw dozens of little 2x3" mockups in his spiral notebook before even opening up a graphic design program. The best part of creating mockups this way is the speed at which you can burn through possible layout ideas. Sketch something, scribble it out. Sketch something else, scribble it out. Do this ten times and you've probably got a fairly decent idea of how to the page should come together.

Seek inspiration offline

CSS galleries and design showcase websites are excellent sources of inspiration, but sometimes a bit of offline media can be just what you need to spur some fresh ideas. Open up a newspaper or magazine, go to the grocery store and look at the packaging, watch a television ad. Pay attention to things that are applicable to your design such as typography, color, and element placement. Ask yourself questions like "What is it I like about this magazine ad?" and "What is about this packaging that just works ?" There's a lot you can learn from observing traditional media.

Learn to let it go

Ever make a button that looks ridiculously awesome but just doesn't belong in your design ? You put so much effort into your ridiculously awesome button, you'll go to great lengths to make it work.

Learn to let it go. Save the button and file it away. Although you've lost this battle, you'll soon have an arsenal of ridiculously awesome buttons you can use in designs later on.


Step away from the computer

If you're having a difficult time with something, leave it alone for a while and come back later. It'll probably be easier after you've had a bit of a break and your mind has settled. Regarding web design, I've noticed this always plays out in a certain way: If I'm hating a design I'm working on and I shelve it for a few days, a lot of the time my reaction upon returning will be "Holy crap that's fantastic!" On the flip-side, I'll often toil away long into the night working on what looks like the best design I've ever created. The next morning I'll look at it again and cringe at the horrible abomination I've created. The moral here is to give your design some space.

Be absorbent

Learn to effectively pinpoint what it is you love about other designer's work and incorporate it into your own. Don't steal designs, but don't deprive yourself of external stimuli either. Become better at identifying why you love the way something looks.

Don't be a one-hit-wonder

Try to avoid using the same techniques over and over again, even if you've done really well with them in the past. Gradient rectangles are my crutch - I have a terrible habit of using them whenever I feel like a design isn't working. "This design sucks...I'll add a rectangle with a gradient fill!" The result is usually something that I'm unhappy with because it looks the same as all my previous work. Try imposing yourself with silly rules, such as "No drop shadows today" or "2D elements ONLY." Locking yourself out from certain design habits forces you to learn new ones.

Seek input from others

This is a tricky one. There are so many ways to ruin a web design, especially when the wrong kinds of people are involved. Be careful who you ask and find people who can provide constructive criticism. Find someone who can tell you specifically what's wrong and how it could be improved. Grow some thick skin, too. Don't assume every criticism is an attack on your work of art. Roll with the punches.

Source : Web Design Tactics

11 Web Design Tips

Before you start design on a website step back a minute – or two. Think about what a website is REALLY supposed to do for the client as well as the visitor. In its simplest form, a website is there to facilitate a transaction of information between it and the visitor. With this in mind, here are some tips for designing useful web sites:

1. Font Free for All: Keep the number of font families you use on a page to a minimum. Using many different fonts on a page communicates a sense of disorganization. Use different fonts only to assist in organizing the page in a clear manner; however you can usually achieve this by changing font sizes and font weight.

2. Put it on my tab: Check your forms to be sure the tab key proceeds to the next expected (and logical) field on a form. For example, if your form is collecting address information and you are on the city field the next tab should go to state, not the 2nd address line field.

3. Dump the landing page: In this day and age that extra click the user has to make on that cool splash page that you spent 2 hours on in Photoshop is not going to impress them - well maybe the first visit; it will most likely be viewed as a nuisance and irritate them by the 2nd or 3rd visit. The visitor wants to get to the information they need ASAP – concentrate on using that graphics savvy to help support the content within the site (i.e. navigation, organized layout).

4. Don’t be too Flashy: There are some sites out there (they know who they are) that use Flash in a really creative but useful manner (http://www.2advanced.com). There are others that use it with the creativity in mind but let the concept of usability fall by the way side. For instance, putting a flash segment on a splash page can compound the annoyance in tip 3. Not only does the visitor have to click just to get to the meat of the site but now he may have to wait for a flash movie to load on top of it.

In addition be careful when creating navigation systems with Flash. I have been to many sites where you almost have to chase after the link because it is spinning around in some sphere or only appears when you hover over some other section just right. I am certainly not against the use of Flash at all – just gratuitous use of it. I liken it to the gratuitous show of female skin in a bad sci-fi movie which has absolutely no bearing on the plot - although I find this a lot easier to accept.

5. No Bouncing Balls: Keep animation to a minimum unless it truly supports the site. Bouncing balls, moving smiley faces, spinning text in most cases is not going to help support the site and usually becomes distracting and sometimes annoying.

6. Background and Readability: Be careful when using backgrounds to choose or create one that will keep a good contrast with the text that sits on top of it. Too much texture in a background can also wreak havoc on the readability of a site.

7. CSS = Yes: Be sure to use CSS (Cascading Style sheets) to separate the content from the presentation. Using inline styles makes things tough when want to change to presentation attributes of a site. There is tons of free material on CSS all over the web.

8. Read up on colors and the emotions/moods they tend to evoke: Note that colors do convey different meanings in different cultures. Also, utilize a good color scheme generator to help you in creating an overall color scheme of the site. Here is a link to a free online one - http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html.

9. But it worked on my machine!: Be sure to test in as many browsers as possible. Things that look great in Internet Explorer may soon be transformed to a collection of HTML elements in complete disarray in another browser or even another version of IE – especially when using a tableless layout approach.

10. You sunk my JavaScript!: Keep the “Display a notification about every script error” checked in IE if you use it as your main browser during development especially when using JavaScript – which I try to keep to a minimum anyway. IE has a habit of overlooking JavaScript errors otherwise leading you to believe that all is well – until you start getting phone calls! Remember though to test in MANY browsers which brings, me to the next tip.

11. Get Firefox 2.0 and download the free utlilites Firebug and Webdeveloper: On top of being another browser to test with, the add-ons Firebug and Webdeveloper are extremely helpful.

John LaSpina's 12 year system development career has spanned many different system development factions including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Financial, Billing, Engineering applications, Intranets, Extranets, and Web Sites.

The development languages/tools John uses includes VB, C#, HTML, DHTML, CSS, PHP, Perl, Javascript, MS SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and Photoshop

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