But I Want My Text Pretty!

So Microsoft and Apple have renewed their font licesnsing agreement. I guess it's a good thing. Fonts on Windows and OS X will continue to be relativily simliar for users on the web. We're still really limited to some fairly boring and common, if not downright bad fonts. It'd be nice if both platforms could expand their common font libraries, but I guess it's asking too much for these companies to make my job easier at no real sacrifice to themselves. So next time you want to use some fancy frilly text on your website, realize that if you want it to be text, which you should, and not an image, these are what you're limited to as far as fonts.

And yes, you can do things to 'get around this' like use images for your text (bad idea as it'll kill your search engine rankings and make it difficult to print/read/edit/copy text), or ask your users to download a new font to use the site (great way to make people hit the back button...works almost as good as basic web security to keep people off your page), and more. Those are the easy ones though. Basically if you want more than 90% of your users to see your site the way you intend, you better intend your text to use these fonts.

Ok here they are. The Windows font name, the Mac font name that we put in, if different, so that it looks close, and then the generic font family that it belongs to.

Windows Font, Mac Font, Generic Font

Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif
Comic Sans MS, cursive
Courier New, Courier, monospace
Georgia, serif
Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif
Lucida Console, Monaco, monospace
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif
Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, serif
Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif
Symbol
Webdings
Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats
MS Sans Serif, Geneva, sans-serif
MS Serif, New York, serif

That's it. That's all of em. If it's not on that list, you can't use it as text and expect to have it look the same way on your websites. Now, you might look at that list and say "Hey that's a good number of options" in which case you'll make my life easier. Just keep in mind though that when you're talking with Ad Agencies, and Print Designers, they might not know this. They see the minute differences in thousands of fonts, and know what specific font and typographic setting truly gets your brand across. They're great at it, because print designers can use pretty much any font they want. Just be ready to have some nice looking text on some print pages, be reduced to these font styles above and look noticiably different. At least until Microsoft and Apple decide to release a few hundred more common fonts.

NELA USA - New Portugese Site

Today we launched NELA USA's Portugese site. NELA USA specializes in registers and plates for newspapers and commercial printers. Their new portugese site is aimed at servicing and assisting their growing business in Brazil. They already have websites in English, Spanish and German.

You wanna try some Flash, kid?

Using Flash in websites is a tricky beast. It's an extremely effective way to get cross browser multimedia content to your users, and add some dynamic elements to your page. Yet it's also easily abused. It can be a fine line between abusing Flash, and leveraging it for your website's benefit. Don't be afraid to use Flash technologies, but be vigilant.

All the kids are doing it

It's easy to get sucked in. You can do so many things in Flash that it's easy to be blinded by it's shiny-ness. Animations, vector graphics, movies, and stuff you almost can't believe. Especially as a client looking to have someone build you your new website, it can be very tempting to respond to an all Flash site. It moves. It plays music and sound effects. It swishes and flows. It's so cool, and you want to be cool. Just say no. Let me lay out a few things you want to avoid.

1. Splash Pages - These are the little animated movies that play before you actually get to go to the site. Usually with a 'skip ahead' link or some such these days, though unsurprisingly not always. Splash pages are terrible for usability. They remove your user another step away from the site, add in a click, frustrate and/or confuse people, and are generally found to be annoying. Nearly all your users will dislike a Splash Page Flash animation. They'll skip it or close the site entirely. How often do you sit patiently watching a Splash Page when there is a skip intro button? If you always watch it, then you're about as common as the people who sit in the movie theater till the end of the credits. Flash Splash Pages are Bad.
2. Whole Site Flash - This is where the entire site, images, animations, menus, content, hundreds of pages maybe, are all contained within a single flash page. The browser doesn't navigate around, all of it is done within the flash. This is tremendously bad. First of all it hurts your Findability and search engine rankings, as there aren't multiple pages on your site with content, which the search engines love. Secondly your user can't bookmark interior 'pages' of the flash. If they want to send some information to someone it's easier to send the link to the page rather than the link to the page with instructions ("OK go to the link, then click on menu, then click on products, then click on 'online offers', then click on $50-$100 then click on next twice, and it'll be the third down on the right, click the image, and you'll see the product details") Why throw up barriers to your users? Oh and it's also generally much more expensive to modify and maintain.
3. Disabled? Tough - Flash accessibility is notorious for disabled users. My next door neighbor is blind and I hear it from her all the time (she has a nice setup with a talking computer and everything). It's made progress over the years, but still, for her, if it's flash it's an immediate page close. Yes, this is anecdotal evidence, but the fact is that if you care at all about Accessibility, which you should because you might be legally required to be, Flash elements can be an issue.
4. Cool Elements For Cool Elements Sake - This is more of a "cultural" issue in that it's not a particularly technical issue, but one of choice. For instance, having music play on your site automatically. Random animations fluttering about distracting your users. Things like that. They look cool and sound cool, but they also turn off most of your users. I wish I could learn why people love this stuff for their own sites, even while not truly realizing they hate it on everyone else's sites. I had one client, Shawn Rodgers Photography, ask me for music on his site. I asked him why, and he told me because all his clients had music on theirs. I had him do an impromptu poll in a few locations about people's feelings about music automatically playing on sites. More than 90% of the people hated it. So why do it? Just because it's cool?

Those are just a few of the problems. Don't get me wrong, I use Flash, and I think it's an amazing technology. I also think that it's one of the most abused ones out there. You should have video and audio options, you should have interesting animations or menus if they're called for, but you need to be cautious with Flash. It can elevate your site to new heights, or drag you down into the gutter. Just be careful.