Buzzing around Twitter today was a link to a Microsoft competition where users of Internet Explorer 8 have the chance of winning $10,000. What you have to do is follow @tengrand_IE8 on Twitter, watch out for the clues to uncover the location of the prize somewhere on the internet. Sounds like a fun challenge, but what’s in it for Microsoft?

IE8 has been out now for a short period and believe is now part of Windows update. The amount of IE8 users should now increase dramatically as users update. To coincide with this launch, Microsoft are tangling a carrot at users of other browsers with the aim of converting them to IE8. $10,000 is a very tempting but requires IE8 to participate. They follow up this tasty carrot by saying:

But you’ll never find it using old Firefox (so get rid of it, or get lost.)

A lawsuit in the happening?

To me this seems like anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft got fined £680.9m in May 2008 by the European Commission and previously £194m in 2006 for a similar act. This isn’t in the same relms, but it’s still targetting it’s competitor Firefox with a monetory bribe.

The concept

Stripped down, this is a clever viral campaign. It engages both non-IE8 users and the ever growing Twitter community for a period of time. Personally I don’t have the time to digest it, but I’m sure others will embrace it.

Will you be taking part?

In the early hours of Sunday, 22nd February 2009, a savage virus called ‘CSV’ began to infect millions of websites worldwide.

Originating from an unknown source in the UK at around 2am GMT, The “Comic Sans” Virus ‘CSV’ started corrupting the CSS files of websites through a server loophole, leaving them defaced with the “Comic Sans” typeface.

By 9am GMT, an estimated 10 million websites were infected with ‘CSV’, by which time the suspected ‘loophole’ in the servers configuration, at the originating London Exchange center, was plugged.

By 9:31am GMT, over 5 million websites were returned to their original state, leaving the rest still infected with ‘CSV’.

A patch download has been created to remedy any websites still infected. This patch can be downloaded at the bottom of this article.

Evidence of infection

Apple

Estimated infection time: 3 hours

Microsoft

Estimated infection time: 6 hours

UK newspapers

Times Online

Estimated infection time: 1 hour

Telegraph

Estimated infection time: 2 hours

Friends

Chrisg (Chris Garrett)

Estimated infection time: 15 minutes

Bronco (Dave Naylor)

Estimated infection time: still infected

Blog Storm (Patrick Altoft)

Estimated infection time: still infected

Reaction

Dave Naylor from Bronco: “I woke up to the news that the CSV infected our main website. After a few moments of deliberation, we decided to take action, much against the wishes of my wife who actually liked the change.”

Mogens Elsberg from Microsoft: “I see this little f***** has come back to bite us in the a**! Maybe we should have scrapped VINCENT CONNARE’s 1995 font for a less volatile alternate. Thanks for the heads up Frog”

John Smith, Chief Executive of BBC worldwide: “We think the British public will welcome the change, we may revert the fix in the next couple of days.”

The Patch

If your website seems to have been infected by the CSV you can manually patch your website by downloading the file below:

CSV patch 1.21, Multi-OS compatible: CSV patch.jpg

While looking up OS, resolution and browers stats for January 2009 on TheCounter.com I can across some statistics that made froth at the g**h. Vista is no doubt a flop for Microsoft, it looks great but that’s just about where the celebrations stop.

According to TheCounter.com the top operating system used to access a TheCounter.com website between Febuary 2009 to January 2009 was Windows XP with 74%….. unsurprising. In last place was Windows Vista with 0%, one place behind Amiga OS!

Ok ok I’m sure you’ll have a million and one reasons why these results are as such but before you spit your dummies out just sit back and enjoy.

I read today that the web design industry could soon look forward to the ability of having typography as good on the web as it is in print. Currently the only web-safe are supported by all browsers,a collection that totals less than ten. Serif and Sans-Serif fonts make up this limited selection,which include the notorious Comic-Sans typeface, a favorite amongst my relatives when they start design wedding and birthday invites, coining the phrase ‘oh Comic-sans, let’s use that one’.

What’s gone before.

In the early 1990′s Microsoft developed a type format called EOT (Embedded Opentype Format) to be used in their Microsoft Word software. They later had the idea of using this same type format in their Internet Explorer browser software and enabled the browser to be EOT compatible since 1996. Their plan was to get their arch rival of the time Netscape them and make this an Open Format so that the internet of the future had the ability to support rich typography. Well unfortunately, for whatever reason, Netscape decided to use another standard so no format was adopted and the EOT propriety remained with Microsoft.

Now Bill Hill, over on the IE Blog has been fighting the good fight to make typography on the Web as good as we’re used to seeing in print. The main issue with having an open type format on the web is the legalities, similar to how music companies copyright their material, allowing personal use of a paid for track but disallowing a public performance of that same song with additions fees being paid.

Ascender Corporation and its collaborators in the typographic community help maintain the legalities of font use. In its introduction to the technologies of font embedding on the Web, Ascender says,

Fonts play a critical role in the display, printing and manipulation of text-based information and content. Font embedding is a broad and complex topic, and we hope this website becomes a valuable resource for everyone who creates or uses fonts to learn more about proper font usage and licensing.

So what’s changed

Currently only Internet Explorer supports EOT, leaving others browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Opera refusing to support EOT until it is officially recognised as the Open Web Standard. EOT has now been presented to the W3C in an attempt to make this the standard. If the W3C pass EOT then the web design industry could see movement towards having a Open Web Standard for typography supported by all the leading Browsers.

For more information on all things Font related, please visit www.fontembedding.com.

Example of EOT css markup

Will we see any movement soon?

Well this has been in the air for well over ten years already so I wouldn’t expect it to happen overnight. Even if the W3C supported EOT the major players like Firefox, Chrome and Safari have to support it for it to be a success. It only takes one miserable git to spoil the party. All in all it’s a step forward, let’s just hope something happens sooner rather than later.