Bruno Abrantes

TypeKit is probably going to radically change Web Design. Yesterday, Jeffrey Veen announced it on the TypeKit blog.

Using Jeffrey’s own words:

Every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font. This is a massive upgrade for the web. But there’s a problem. While it’s technically quite easy to link to fonts, it’s legally more nuanced. Almost all fonts are protected by copyright — even those available for free — and very few of them allow for linking via CSS or redistribution on the web.

That’s where Typekit comes in. We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

When CSS3 comes around, designers will once again have (almost) full control over their typography, and this time without having to resort to Flash. TypeKit’s easy one-line hosting solution is setting itself up to be as game-changing for the typography industry as iTunes was to the music industry.

To keep a close eye on the development of TypeKit, you can subscribe to their blog or follow them on Twitter.

Yes, it’s true! The next working CSS specification is being published in paperback format. As a thriller! Some may argue the current CSS 3 Spec is already a huge page-turner, and would sell millions as it is, but the W3C, in a bold move to make Web Standards hip (as in cool), hired famous writer Dan Brown to novelize the upcoming standard.

Brown is the author of famous novels such as The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, both of which have been recently made into movies, so we should expect a work of the highest standard of fiction. Keeping this in mind, here is an artist’s rendition of the cover of the soon-to-be novel:

Oh yeah, and judging by the direction things are going, you should expect to see this in bookshelves across the World as early as 2017. And, sources say, the movie tie-in is coming in 2018.

If you’re familiar with designing for the Web, then you’ve probably heard about the principle of Graceful Degradation. This concept focuses on being able to provide a fault-tolerant system, assuring that a system can continue to operate should one of it’s components fail.

Translate that into the Web world, and all it means is that you should somehow support older browsers. You develop using the latest and greatest and then, by the end of the project, you test your product on older browsers, making fixes here and there. Also, you frantically strive to design a wholly equal experience for all the browsers you “support”. What ends up happening is that you get a relatively watered-down experience in all platforms, all because of the need to support older browsers. (…) more after the jump ›