Rich typography on the web
sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a mix of Javascript and Flash that enables a web designer to move away from the restrictions of on being able to use web-safe fonts and pick the one’s they really want to use. sIFR isn’t to everyone’s taste however, mainly down to the fact that it is heavy on server load, with the relevant Flash, Javascript and CSS files taking a meaty chunk out of the browsers performance. My current agency have taken the steps to ban sIFR from all future web builds, mainly due to these inefficiencies.
Those shoes are too big for you son!
This news broke my heart, the first signs of rich typography on the web and it’s taken away from me by technical issues. Whilst I argued day and night with the developers, asking them to look harder at a fix or an alternative my words seemed to be falling on deaf ears, so I, a mere designer whose job it is to merely ‘colour in’ and ’stay between the lines’ decided to play sherlock and find an alternative.
Search for the Holy Grail
Well I didn’t find the Holy Grail, but I did find
FLIR (pronounced FLEER, Facelift Image Replacement).
Facelift Image Replacement (or FLIR, pronounced fleer) is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via Javascript and visible to all modern browsers. Any element with text can be replaced: from headers (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to <span> ) to elements and everything in between!
It looks exactly what I’m after! It claims to automatically find what needs to be replaced and where (presumably through standard markup tags like a H2), with it’s nifty Javascript. I can’t see any flash at all in it’s downloads section so again I presume it isn’t required.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 pm
“mainly down to the fact that it is heavy on server load”
Of course, using server side image generation may not exactly help there
That said, I was wondering if you’ve used sIFR 3 already?
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Hi Mark,
I’m not 100% sure, all I know is that we used it on some well know brands websites and it caused a few issues.
Would you recommend retrying sIFR 3? Also what major changes have been made to iron out these bugs?
January 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
[...] DTR (relies on server-generated images, basically a fancy version of simple image replacement), FLIR (an attempt at a better SiFR), and [...]