TYPE IS BEAUTIFUL Ark Typography @ mockee 

TYPE RENDERING 

a designer cannot ensure that users will see HTML text exactly as designed. 

Chrome for Mac OS X 

IE 9 for Windows 7 

IE 6 for Windows XP 

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Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays. 

the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness. 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. 

RENDERING STRATEGIES - Black and White (bi-level) - Grayscale (antialiasing , resampled for image) - Sub-pixel (colored pixels, LCD) 

RASTERIZATION ideal shape black & white grayscale sub-pixel 

CURRENT IMPLEMENTATIONS Windows Mac OS X iOS iOS GDI-Grayscale GDI-ClearType (ClearType applies only to TrueType-based web fonts) DirectWrite Core Text (with Quartz) Core Text (with Quartz) Core Text (with Quartz) GDI-Grayscale GDI-ClearType (ClearType applies only to TrueType-based web fonts) DirectWrite Sub-pixel (opaque background , normal orientation) also for Retina displays Sub-pixel (opaque background , normal orientation) also for Retina displays Grayscale sub-pixel (disabled by default) Fonts Hinting Sub-pixel (opaque background , normal orientation) also for Retina displays Sub-pixel (opaque background , normal orientation) also for Retina displays Grayscale sub-pixel (disabled by default) 

Mac OS X and iOS Generally very reliable Windows Font format is important Hinting matters 

CONCLUSIONS - Accept the reality - Assume the worst - Use web fonts - Beware of big type - Wait for a future Font smoothing explained - szafranek.net 

SIDE STORY ICONIC FONTS http://dou.bz/234nZ2 

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https://github.com/blog/1135-the-making-of-octicons 

CSS TEXT 

READING FONT-FAMILY 

ޑุ 楷体 

$KaiFont = STKaiti $HeiFont = STHeiti 

$HeiFont = "Hiragino Sans GB", STHeiti, "Microsoft YaHei", "Wenquanyi Micro Hei", "WenQuanYi Micro Hei Mono", "WenQuanYi Zen Hei", "WenQuanYi Zen Hei Mono", LiGothicMed, SimHei $KaiFont = STKaiti, "AR PL UKai", "AR PL KaitiM GB", KaiTi, KaiTi_GB2312, "TW-Kai" http://dou.bz/1i5IKs 

SPACING The space bar is not a design tool. ELLEN LUPTON, THINKING WITH TYPE Between ideographic and non-ideographic text. - an en space (plain text) - 1/4 of an em space (InDesign) - auto space (CSS) - necessary ? 

-ms-text-autospace none ideograph-alpha ideograph-numeric ideograph-parenthesis ideograph-space CSS Text Level 3, Section 9.4 text-spacing CSS Text Level 4, Section 8.3 normal | none | [ trim-start | space-start ] [ trim-end | space-end | allow-end ] [ trim-adjacent | space-adjacent ] ideograph-alpha | ideograph-numeric no-compress | punctuation 

JUSTIFICATION 

text-align: justify text-justify: inter-ideograph http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#text-justify IE Chrome Safari Firefox Opera √ Mac OS / iOS (inter-ideograph only) Mac OS / iOS (inter-ideograph only) Mac OS / iOS (inter-ideograph only) * inter-word justify √ Windows (inter-word) Windows (inter-word) inter-ideograph only * inter-word justify inter-word | distribute http://codepen.io/mockee/pen/suGbI 

LINE BREAKING 

PUNCTUATION PROHIBITIONS Simplified Chinese (Ark Version, like webkit) Characters that are not allowed at the start of a line : !%),.:;?]}¢°’”‟›℃∶ɺɻʭʥ㽆〞﹚﹜ʂˋʣɼɽɿʀʁʧʩ not allowed at the end of a line : $(£¥﹙﹛ʬʪʮʰʤ㽅ᶸˈʢɽʦʨˊˇ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_breaking_rules_in_East_Asian_languages not allowed at both ends of a line : “'‘ can't be separated: —…‥ https://github.com/mathiasbynens/unicode-data 

ISSUEs of line breaking strategy for Chinese on Chrome and Safari Wrapped with a span tag for each word, line break strategy becomes ineffective. word-break: break-all ⊗ ⇢ PROHIBITIONS ⊗ wrap word & punctuations ⾫ ⇣ new line breaking bug display: inline-block | run-in ⊗ √ 

Web Designer ? Typographer ? Front End Engineer ! 

Thx:) douban.com/people/mockee ILLUSTRATION CREDITS: ALISTAPART