Rendering Typeface with CSS

One question I had about CSS is there any way of including Fonts in a Style sheet on a HTML page that the user does not have on their computer?

By coincidence I stumbled on a post on the WSG mailing list on this very topic. In can be achieved with the use of sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Relpacement). It works using a “combination of javascript, CSS and Flash. A great starting point is an article by Mike Davison, which gives a comprehensive guide to sIFR. Below is his summary of how it works:

How it Works

“sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. Here is the entire process:

1. A normal (X)HTML page is loaded into the browser.
2. A javascript function is run which first checks that Flash is installed and then looks for whatever tags, ids, or classes you designate.
3. If Flash isn't installed (or obviously if javascript is turned off), the (X)HTML page displays as normal and nothing further occurs. If Flash is installed, javascript traverses through the source of your page measuring each element you've designated as something you'd like "sIFRed".
4. Once measured, the script creates Flash movies of the same dimensions and overlays them on top of the original elements, pumping the original browser text in as a Flash variable.
5. Actionscript inside of each Flash file then draws that text in your chosen typeface at a 6 point size and scales it up until it fits snugly inside the Flash movie.

This all happens in a split-second, so all of the checking, replacing, and scaling is not visible to the user. It is not uncommon to notice a very short delay as the Flash loads, but to the user, none of the internals of this process are exposed.”

Has anyone else used sIFR or come across it before?

References: Davidson Mike , April 27, 2005, “sIFR: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses.” Mike Industries 30 March 2007, http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/

Quick Time and XHMTL

Ok I'm impressed , the whole idea of roaming the web, and finding other peoples code and grabbing it for your own project seemed a bit strange to me. However for my project I neeed to understand how to embed Quicktime movies into a page. So I google "XHMTL Quick time" and within ten minutes I have the code I need and have a working test page playing the video. While I don't claim to fully understand all the code involved a can follow most of it. I need to read more on how object classes function.
If anyone else is interested the code can be found at:

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/courses/geosc010/videos/ducky1.html

<div id="container">

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
  width="352" height="280" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<param name="qtsrc" value="rtsp://streaming.ems.psu.edu:554/geosc10/duckMountain1.mov" />
<param name="autoplay" value="true" />
<param name="controller" value="true" />

   <embed src="http://streaming.ems.psu.edu/geosc10/duckMountain1.mov"
       target="quicktimeplayer"
       type="video/quicktime"
       width="352"
       height="280"
       autoplay="true"
       controller="true"
       pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">

PHP For Beginners

This week's lecture on server side technologies and PHP / MySQL was new territory for me, but thanks to Tim’s informative introduction, I m not feeling as overawed as I was expecting.

A useful resource I found is a series of Flash Tutorials on PHP which I as a newcomer to the subject found very helpful, “Killer PHP” seems to cover the basics well.

I got the link through the WSG (Sydney) mailing list, be warned you will receive a lot of mail through this list, but it does have some interesting discussion on web standards and industry issues as well as offering help to anyone having problems with HTML and CSS.The WSG home page is worth a look there are transcripts of talks and podcasts available.

Learning Contract

My learning contract url is http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10125211/learning_draft/learn.html

A very interesting weekend spent playing with XHTML and CSS , followed by a frustrating couple of days trying to upload the file (the problem was my firewall settings). Can highly recommend the book "Headfirst HTML with CSS and XHTML" by Freeman and Freeman Published by O Rielly.

WEEK 2 : Networks

Being a novice to web technologies, I have found this week’s topic fascinating.
I’m not sure what I find more impressive; how the web functions around interconnected networks or the fact that it does run so well using these technologies. As Brian Marshall says while explaining the role of DNS in the system “This is one of the most amazing parts of the DNS system -- it is completely distributed throughout the world on millions of machines administered by millions of people, yet it behaves like a single, integrated database!” (Marshall,para.21)

In my browsing on this topic I stumbled across a blog by Ben Worthen of CIO magazine, titled “Who owns the Internet? We have a map that shows you”. While I m not sure the article delivers the headline, it does contain an interesting map showing “just about all the routers in

” (Worthen, 2006, para.1) and who owns them. If you're interested the map can be downloaded as a PDF.

The other thing that has struck me coming from a background of traditional media (Print, Television and Film), is the speed the internet has developed and continues to develop (Howe 2007) .It seems inevitable that with increased technical efficiencies and the resulting increase in consumer uptake that “the Internet will subsume all digital broadcast mediums”. (Search and Go, 2007,para1) A prediction that makes the need to understand the technologies the internet uses all the more important for some one such as myself.

References:

Marshall, B. , How Domain Servers Work, howstuffworks , viewed 11 March 2007, <>

Worthen, B. March 2006, Who owns the Internet? We have a map that shows you. CIO Magazine , viewed 11 March 2007.

Howe, W. January 2007, A Brief History of the Internet , Walt Howes Internet Learning Center, viewed 11 March 2007,

searchand go, Internet Explained, searchandgo , viewed 11 March 2007