April 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be taking the forever long trip down the East Coast mainline from sunny Yorkshire to London for the Future of Web Design 2009 conference on Thursday.
Following last year’s conference I was straight in when it came to getting tickets for this year’s conference. Although this year I’m not attending the workshop day as I did last year I am massively looking forward to the conference day and the couple of extra days hanging around the capital.
One of the issues many web designers face is that of the limited number of web safe fonts that can be used to display standard text. Now Cufón has entered the game are we a step closer to a new world of web typography.
Previously the only method of using a wide range of fonts on the web was to use image replacement. This however can be time consuming, difficult to maintain and bad for SEO, especially if used for all the text in a website. Over a year ago I came across Sifr as a more workable solution but found it to have a number of downsides mainly to do with its dependence on Flash and its inexplicable ability to resize text depending on the size of containing elements. All this frustrated me, limiting the situations I felt comfortable in using it.
The final version of Internet Explorer was launched on March 20th and yet a month has not even passed and it has been announced that the browser will be made available as an automatic update. Of course web developers around the world are rejoicing as this seemingly marks a move towards a simpler life with a more standards compliant IE. But it’s not all so simple.
Today I managed to pick up the first issue of the new Wired UK magazine that launched on April 2nd. Essentially it’s the same as the US version but run by Brits with content and adverts tailored primarily for a UK audience. When hearing that Wired would be crossing the pond I must admit I was concerned about how different the magazine would be from the US version.
The design of Wired has always been very unique compared to other UK magazines using a rough matt cover and being very design focused from cover to cover. Although I’ve yet to start reading the magazine it seems all these seem intact, but one thing concerns me at the moment.