Re: Are Downloadable Fonts better???

[Colin Moock]

John,

To be honest with you, I think Taylor's point is very well taken,

philosophically. Flash is really a wonderful technology for animation

and sound, but in the world of text delivery--from an information tool

and accessibility standpoint--it leaves something to be desired. If

smooth edges and scaling are truly all you want from your text, the

Flash is great, but if you want to deliver that text in multiple

formats (print, web, email, voice-reader, braille etc.) or perform

searches on it, or customize it depending on the user, or as Taylor

points out, index and catalog it--all things the web is remarkably good

at--then Flash isn't really an answer.


Obviously, the medium should fit the message, and sometimes, when

appearance is everything, Flash text is appropriate.  But for any

serious uses of text-based information, Flash in its current

incarnation is a dismal match for more appropriate technologies like

HTML or SGML, databases, or even ASCII ;). It sounds to me like you and

Taylor are talking about separate issues: 1) Consider Flash for text

and animation when visual impact is the highest priority 2) For more

text-heavy information systems, use open standards, and make your

information functional and reusable. A similar example would be don't

produce an encyclopedia in Illustrator. Use Illustrator for things like

magazine covers.


On the same topic, I may as well point out that Flash content is

inaccessible in various ways to users with visual, auditory, or motor

impairments. People with those conditions make up a good 5-10% of the

users on the Web. It's something to consider if your audience is "web

users in general". Text delivered in HTML with external stylesheets can

be very accessible to the disabled community. The separation of content

from layout via things like embedded fonts and CSS is one of the

fundamental philosophical tenants of the Web from its early days--offer

the same information to as many people as possible in as many output

formats as possible. (There's much more info at www.webable.com, a site

I produce for a foundation that works with the W3C to figure out what

to do with things like text in plugins, and java, and on the web in

general.)


It occurs to me that perhaps you and Taylor should be thinking of ways

to merge your viewpoints instead of debating which is better. Didn't

you ever wish you could search your Flash library for the symbol that

contained a certain string? Wouldn't it be great to offer users the

ability to jump around a movie by searching its text? Maybe Flash will

adopt some of the important information access features of the

"traditional" web as it matures...that'd be amazing!


Cheers,

Colin

flashershocker [dot] com

,Internet writes:

>Hi everyone,


>I NEED HELP. Please give me ammunition so I can give a best response to

>Taylor, whose belief is that Downloadable fonts are now and Flash is not

>a viable solution. I think I have a good answer but want as many

>constructive suggests (Note constructive) so that I might polish my

>responce. This thread is on the new monkeyjunkies list.


>>Not to start a religious war, but I don't think it's a good idea to

make

>>your text a binary executable.  I don't think it's a good idea to make

>>your text an image either.  It removes the meaning from your page and

>>prevents its from degrading, and from being indexed.  Downloadable

fonts

>>is a much better solution IMHO.


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