Having delved deeper into Zoe Gillenwater’s guide Stunning CSS3, I am already feeling less anxious about my ambitions for my final page layouts. First, the section on embedding web fonts was a useful supplement to the Lynda.com videos and managed to answer my question about license agreements. Gillenwater notes that most of these licenses were written before the @font-face rule was established, which explains why I’ve had trouble finding references to embedding fonts on the web. I’ve decided to follow David’s lead and be safe rather than sorry, although this means giving up hope on the Pan Am font from P22, which just screams Parisian avant-garde exhibition brochure to me.
The “Graphic Effects Sans Graphics” section of the book was also especially illuminating. As someone who feels much more comfortable using CSS/HTML syntax than a magic lasso or layers or levels or whatever tools one wields in Photoshop, I am always interested in cutting out redundant graphics. So I was thrilled to learn that aside from giving me a break, creating graphic effects like color gradients and rounded edges in CSS actually results in fewer HTTP requests to the server and thus a quicker load time.
Of course I would still like to improve my Photoshop skills, but this kind of efficiency seems essential to web design, just as it is for presenting scholarly work in any medium. Prof. Petrik emphasized this last week in her discussion about employing style sheets for thesis or dissertation writing. In both cases, the best way to avoid distracting and burdensome mistakes is to rely on a single clean set of styles. As it is, my portfolio page is rather bulky with redundant coding, but my goal is to trim it down significantly over the course of the semester.
Addendum: This week I commented on posts by Rosendo and Celeste.
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marthalindsey said
While I found the coding hints in the CSS3 book and the Lynda videos particularly informative this week, I still find myself unsure about what to do and how to start when working on my project. I too hope to trim down my bulky coding, but I still don’t understand how to go about tackling it. I think this class might be well served to have a study group or review session in addition to the weekly lectures. I can’t seem to figure it out on my own thus far.
February 13 Blog Comments « iprefertobecalledahacker said
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Type Assignment Trial and Error « object files said
[…] my header, I finally managed to snag Pan Am, the P22 font of my dreams. I had given up hope on it last week when I realized that P22 licenses don’t allow @font-face embedding, but it […]