Reverse bounty: SIFR.module - clean, accessible fonts using Flash

By boris mann on 16 Feb 2006 at 13:47 UTC

One of the big issues with HTML has always been the limited support for different fonts, especially across browser and across platforms. SIFR is a well-known technique to replace HTML text with Flash fonts on the fly -- see the SIFR main page for more info. The text remains selectable and linkable, and the underlying HTML tags (h1, h2, etc.) are still fully accessible and indexed by search engines. See Typophile for a great, Drupal-powered example of this.

Up until now, integrating the scripts required has meant building it once and putting all the code directly into your theme. With this module, any Drupal user will be able to select which fonts (aka typography for the design nerds) to use, control which HTML paths (e.g. h1.title, .block-title, etc.) should be replaced, upload your SWF font files, and everything else to make it a seamless experience. Future versions may even allow the direct uploading of font files which will be converted server-side to SWF directly.

The good folks at Lullabot have agreed to code the module, and Bryght has committed to sponsoring the full development of this, which is estimated to be as much as $3000US. We would love for the community to pitch in and help fund this, or contribute whatever you can to get it done. If you donate an amount above $50US, your name will be linked to the URL of your choice on the project page. All donators will be listed in the README for the module. Please use Paypal to send to info AT bryght.com.

Comments

nice

bertboerland commented 17 February 2006 at 15:42

nice of lullabot to know that it might benefit the community and them to GPL this and people using it should consider to donate.

me? i dont like this myself, since I use flashblock, the site knows I have flash and sends me flash, yet it only displays after I told it so, which is fine for ads and stuff but not for heading.

--
groets
bertb

--
groets
bert boerland

There are too many

tangent commented 18 February 2006 at 04:43

There are too many annoyances with sIFR, some of which are not noted on the website, which cause me to disapprove of its use.

1. Font settings specified in the browser are not respected. I have minimum font sizes specified to override the poor choices made by website creators. Further, with website specified fonts disabled sIFR fonts are still used. This is apparently a bug in Flash.

2. Searched for text is not highlighted. Also, as noted text cannot be made both selectable and linkable.

3. Font size does not scale on the fly. I respectfully disagree with Mike Davidson that most people browse with text size permanently enlarged or not. If all websites used the same font sizes this might be true but sadly it is not.

4. Pages take longer to load.

I would like to wish you luck with this but I really hope sIFR doesn't gain widespread use.

I love it & will contribute soon

sangamreddi commented 18 February 2006 at 02:58

I love sIFR and made a theme based on that and contributed to the community. While playing with sIFR i found serveral issues, those need to be addressed in the module.

Issues & Suggestions

Here you will see and read how to apply sIFR on links, that still do have:

* title attribute showing as tool tip
* accessible trough tabbing
* context menu on right-click
* href info showing up on status bar
* clean referrer passthrough

There are few limitaions with it - seems like it not working propely with opera browser.

Space problems-the replaced text creating extra space aorund the flash file, that need to be removed.

Two Color sIFR
Edit: Latest link

The module should be more genralised when we upload own fonts, we need to adjust the css accordingly. It would be better to allow custom css to be attatched along with upload.

Let me know if I am wrong. I'll contribute soon.

Sunny
www.gleez.com | www.sandeepone.com

Here is the sIFR challenge...

Geary commented 18 February 2006 at 07:29

I would like somebody to show me one sIFR site, just one, where the type quality is anywhere close to the quality of a Windows TrueType font with ClearType enabled.

On every sIFR site I've seen, especially including Typophile, the type quality suffers because of the poor anti-aliasing in Flash. They don't do subpixel anti-aliasing at all!

sIFR is a treat for designers at the expense of site visitors.

You will find that Flash 8

Zen commented 20 February 2006 at 15:34

You will find that Flash 8 has some excellent improvements in this department with a new/improved font rendering engine known as FlashType. Well worth taking a look at ...

The Flash 8 player apparently currently stands at about 50 - 55% in terms of user penetration. Official figures should be out next month.

-K

sifr showcase

mdroste commented 29 March 2006 at 16:43

Please, just take a look here http://www.alvit.de/sifrbeauty/sifr-resources.php and you will find enough good sites with sifr.

But that's not the key point. With TrueType / ClearType you are restricted to the fonts installed on the client. That's why many designer still use images for headlines.
Of course a bad choice.
With sifr you can use the fonts you want.

The sifr module is a great chance to give Drupal Sites a better look.
Thank's to the developer.

--
go with us - learn php

--
mdwp*

Fancy theme

Geary commented 31 March 2006 at 03:56

I finally found an example of sIFR use that I actually like, and it's right here in Drupal. The Fancy theme uses sIFR for a decorative headline typeface.

The type lacks subpixel anti-aliasing (ClearType), of course, but because it's so different from any conventional headline type it doesn't look bad.

The problem I have with the other sIFR sites I've seen is that they use sIFR to select a typeface that just isn't different enough from the typefaces that are likely to be available for ClearType rendering. The designer gets to pick their "just right" headline font, but it's so similar the standard typefaces that there's really no point in using sIFR in the first place, and the visitor has to put up with less readable type.

The Fancy theme uses sIFR to display a fun, decorative typeface, so it's a whole different story.

There seems to be...

q0rban commented 18 February 2006 at 14:06

There seems to be a lot of negative feedback on this topic (above)... It's the first time I've heard of sIFR, and it sounds like a great idea to me, but I'd like to hear more of the good side of the story before I pony up... :)

I too am not very impressed with Flash's font smoothing, but looking at plain text in default windows environments looks worse to me. Nothing beats a Mac, though...

Horizontal spacing makes a module the wrong place to do this

handelaar commented 18 February 2006 at 19:51

If your sIFR font is significantly narrower or wider than the theme's default <Hx> typeface, every sIFR heading will be rendered at a different font size.

That looks bloody hideous on pages like /node.

This *belongs* in the theme, because tweaking letter-spacing in CSS is the only way to make it work properly.

Of course it's theme specific

boris mann commented 19 February 2006 at 15:41

It just so happens that making it a module will make it a lot easier to work with for designers. And, you'll be able to tweak the CSS directly in any case.

The difficult part for designers, based on feedback, is finding the correct hooks, getting the fonts included, etc. etc.

You can complain about the implementation (or help fix it!) once the module is committed.

Well, yeah

handelaar commented 20 February 2006 at 02:10

I'm really not the poo-poohing-an-idea type, honest.

I just think it'd be more useful to put theme snippets up somewhere. A module, imho, violates the seperation of logic and presentation - and I think they should remain resolutely seperated.

As you may know, I'm using sIFR on my own site at the moment, but it's getting dumped soon because a) Flash background transparency doesn't work cross-platform and I intended to use a background, and also b) on a blog page with >10 entries the script takes so long to execute that Firefox prompts the user to shut it off. Muy bad behaviour.

I use it for page titles

boris mann commented 21 February 2006 at 13:55

I use it for page titles. Also, on Bryght, we've used it for headers, and I've never experienced the Firefox prompt. Your mileage may vary, I guess.

sifr is still not utf-8

nathandigriz commented 19 February 2006 at 15:53

sifr is still not utf-8 compliant. Flash does not exhibit all spanish characters regardless of how it is coded. The original programmer still has no idea why. You get nothing but plank spaces. It is really frustrating.

Has anyone ever tried using it with chinese of hebrew characters? Probably the same thing happens.

That depends entirely on

Zen commented 20 February 2006 at 16:03

That depends entirely on what font(s) you are using and what character sets are embedded. Flash has excellent charset support - Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Devanagari etc.. It however does not have RTL support.

I don't know anything about sIFR (except its principle), but there very likely will be instructions on how to embed your own fonts and character sets/outlines in (I'm assuming) a provided FLA.

-K

This is the problem. Neither

nathandigriz commented 20 February 2006 at 16:52

This is the problem. Neither the provided fla siles nor Flash MX or Flash 8 show the fonts despite the settings, font family and encodings. Portuguese and Catalan character sets are loaded into the files but do not appear in the finished flash movies. Mike the sifr author nor Macromedia can explain why this happens.

This is totally off topic but it is my reason for not wanting a sifr module. I would prefer something that is PHP driven and guaranteed to work in any language where the font and encoding is provided.

...now stepping down from my soap box...

If you like, you can e-mail

Zen commented 20 February 2006 at 18:53

If you like, you can e-mail me via my contact form and we can take this off-line.

-K

paypal!

bexecho commented 20 February 2006 at 02:48

I tried to Paypal some money to info AT bryght DOT com and it's been unclaimed. Should I send it somewhere else?

No that's right

boris mann commented 21 February 2006 at 13:54

We'll claim it, I've been out of the country, Roland is picking this up.

Wondering what ever became of this...

davebytes commented 8 June 2006 at 04:59

I've been heavily programming in the 'WordPress World' for two and a half years, and looking to expand into some other PHP-based systems (i.e., 'port' some of my bigger/cooler stuff to other systems).

It just so happens that I created a plugin I called "FlashyTitles", which combined an (awkward but) simple admin panel with auto-generation of CSS and JS code inserted at the right points to produce sIFR integration without users touching a single CSS or PHP file. I'm actually working on FlashyTitles 3 right now (working with the sIFR 3 alpha code -- cool to finally have Flash 8's dropshadows, knockouts, etc., as well as better AA, but more importantly is the vastly-improved replacement layout code).

Anyway, just wanted to check on whether there's an actual module done (I couldn't find further info), or whether there's significant work already under way.

Thanks!

sIFR

sepeck commented 8 June 2006 at 05:06

http://drupal.org/project/sifr

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}