On 22/02/2010 at 23:04, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
It’s simply a font set naming
oversight as the primary font isn’t Helvetica but, as you say, Arial.
Oversight or not, it probably helps print designers ease into the web medium - although it doesn’t educate them.
Helvetica is not a terribly good choice for body-size text on screen. This isn’t a ‘bash Helvetica’ thing, although that typeface is one of the most over-used fonts in the non-web world. As Walter already mentioned, the characters in Helvetica are simply not that clear on screen at small sizes. Arial is better by design for screen work. But most print designers tend to prefer Helvetica to Arial.
Typographically speaking they are not direct equivalents; Arial is softer than Helvetica, with a less squared-off structure and many stem terminators cut at slight angles. It IS regarded by many as a Helvetica clone but, although the metrics are virtually identical (making the two fonts good ‘swap-outs’ for each other in font sets), it is actually based on the older Monotype Grotesque typeface. In detail it is more of a Humanist form of sans-serif than Helvetica, which is, in contrast, moderately industrial in feel and execution.
My problem with the naming of the font set is simply that the label is
not what you are getting in the tin. If I apply this font set then I’m
expecting Helvetica but will only see Helvetica if Arial somehow fails
(which in itself should be highly unlikely as it’s a web safe font).
My ‘expectation vs. reality’ needle jumps into the red zone, that’s all.
Regards,
Tim.
On 23 Feb 2010, at 18:11, Keith Martin wrote:
On 22/02/2010 at 23:04, Tim Plumb email@hidden wrote:
It’s simply a font set naming
oversight as the primary font isn’t Helvetica but, as you say, Arial.
Oversight or not, it probably helps print designers ease into the
web medium - although it doesn’t educate them.
Helvetica is not a terribly good choice for body-size text on
screen. This isn’t a ‘bash Helvetica’ thing, although that typeface is one of the most over-used fonts in the non-web world. As Walter
already mentioned, the characters in Helvetica are simply not that
clear on screen at small sizes. Arial is better by design for screen
work. But most print designers tend to prefer Helvetica to Arial.
Typographically speaking they are not direct equivalents; Arial is
softer than Helvetica, with a less squared-off structure and many
stem terminators cut at slight angles. It IS regarded by many as a
Helvetica clone but, although the metrics are virtually identical
(making the two fonts good ‘swap-outs’ for each other in font sets),
it is actually based on the older Monotype Grotesque typeface. In
detail it is more of a Humanist form of sans-serif than Helvetica,
which is, in contrast, moderately industrial in feel and execution.
I use Helvetica on my site and I don’t have a problem with it. I do like the ‘industrial’ feel it gives, but I can also see how Arial is nice too. Either or works.
Dan, back to the % size. I cannot set %-size to the styles.
Once I could set it somehow, but – strange - I could not use it on the text. Its on me, thats clear, but I have no idea where to seek.
I’ve been bugged by not understanding what FW will allow for settings of type sizes. Haven’t been able to get clear by reading the manuals.
It seems that FW will allow me to enter ems, pixels, etc. in the dialog boxes, but in some cases will not include the information in the HTML files it generates.
What are the rules for choosing/entering measurements in various places?
The rule is cascading. Settings are given through, from one level to another, from top to bottom. Meaning: If you set body to 75% (=highest level) that means all text is now set to 75% of the standard browser setting (normally 16px) If you then set your p-tag to 80%, this means 80% of your body-tag, so 80% of that 75% of that default browser setting. Normally you do not want that. Leave that part of your p-tag alone, just take care of the typical paragraph settings, like line-height background-colour (maybe) and so on. Same issue for fontset, colour, padding, tracking, a tag etc. Once you start asking these questions, its good to realise what CSS really is about. Because if you design without being aware of the impact of settings at a higher level, one could get unexpected results. Even if FW takes care of the most behind the scenes.
Excellent atelier, thank you. Its great to learn from you … Allow me one last question:
How do you do the font settings. What do you choose and what tags do you use? Lets say for example bodytext
Tag = p
Font = helvetica
Size = %75
To be honest - I am somehow confused with “leave p tag alone”. Why leave them alone. At least I’am quite near to
wysiwyg - but actually Iam still far away.
Well thank you, but I’m also in a learning process you know…My way of doing as it is now is a result of trial and error. When starting a new project, I copy and rename a blank project with already preset styles, and I hardly create new styles in the Inspector. Why? I do not like styles like style34 style45 etc. It’s a control thing. I use the body tag to create settings that are important for all of the fonts in the whole document. That makes it more easy to focus on the exceptions. So I do not leave p-tag alone, I just do not have to think about the settings that are already in the body-tag, like relative size (and it’s 75%, not %75) But mind you, there are others that do not make a body tag at all, and put everything in the p-tag. There is not just one good methode, but several. Hope this helps, feel free to ask more Hope others also give their idea’s about this.
So wait a minute. On one of my old sites I have some text that I set to 12px in Freeway, and yet it does scale in my browser! What’s going on? Is FW working some sort of magic behind the scenes?
Which browser? It’s Windows IE that has all the problems (the elephant
in the living room). Mac browsers generally do not have any trouble
scaling pixel-sized fonts in Web pages, and haven’t since Netscape 4
was considered state of the art.
Walter
On Mar 4, 2010, at 1:10 PM, derekzinger wrote:
So wait a minute. On one of my old sites I have some text that I set
to 12px in Freeway, and yet it does scale in my browser! What’s
going on? Is FW working some sort of magic behind the scenes?
Yes, and those lower than 8. I believe 8 can zoom pixel fonts, and
even scales the pictures to match (not sure about that last part,
might be mixing it up with Safari there…). The whole scale the type
along with the pictures gag originated with (believe it or not) IE 5
for the Mac. At the time, and for quite a while after, too, it was the
only one that did that basic thing to keep the layout roughly how you
designed it while still zooming in to support the visually disabled.
Walter
On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:12 PM, derekzinger wrote:
Ah, that would explain it (Safari here). So the scaling issue mainly
applies to IE then?
I’ve had a look around the web and what a mess of px ems and % values there seems to be.
The NY Times and Salon seem to use mainly ems, while Apple appears to use mainly pixels (perhaps to kill IE6 and 7?), and Microsoft and Google use a bizarre mixture of units: often px for font-size and ems for line-height. I haven’t found any examples of using %.
Hope others also give their idea’s about this.