Browser Incompatibility
A friend was asking me about web developing coming from a design background and what limitations you have to face. They had done a lovely design using font X which only for a specific platform and wanted to know why I couldn't put it on the website in the same format. I worded a lengthy (for me) reply about the issue and thought someone else might find it helpful.
In regards to the typeface a particular font will only appear in a readers browser if they have that font installed on their computer. A prime example is Helvetica which is only available to Mac users. To get around this, the best idea is to use common fonts and group them together by similarities across different platforms i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux etc. Because of this restriction you are limited to what fonts you can use for text which is why typeface will appear different.
When developing a website you must remember that though you might have a Mac and your browser is Safari that doesn't mean that you end user(reader) has got the same set-up and that is were lies some restrictions in formatting. Browser incompatibility and display differences really comes from:
- Different Browsers
- Different Browser Versions
- Different Computer Types
- Different Screen Sizes
- Different Font Sizes
Because of this you really want to make sure you have access to the following browsers on the follow platforms:
Platforms:
Windows, Mac, Linux (though I tend to worry least about Linux)
Browsers:
Internet Explorer, version 6,7
FireFox, version 1.5 upwards
Opera, version 8 upwards
Safari, version 2 upwards
Now before anyone says anything about my site not being 100% compatible, I don't really care. Not to be harsh, but I don't have the time to make sure everyone in every format can read this. I presume that if you are reading my site you are a tech head and have access to at least one descent browser/platform combo.
Comments
Incidently, I have a font called Helvetica here, and it's not a Mac - this is because web browsers and text editors will often convert popular-named fonts into something they have that looks the same (or similar).
It won't help for all of your body text, but if you haven't played with it, sIFR is worh checking out. Interesting approach . . .
http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/
like Peter's my initial thought was sifr - but then, if the layout was that dependend on the typeface I could also imagin doing it in all Flash (8 for readability) XML driven of course and provide a plain xhtml/css fall back using PHP - all of that implemented with swf-object for a seamless user expirience.
That way you'd have a 99.9% graphical-perfect solution for about 80+% of users and a fully accessible version for all others too. Even if it sounds much more work, it mostly isn't as you dont have to care so much about browser (in)compatibilities which is a major pia as we all know.
