Just my type
Last December, Rich Rutter announced The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (Web Typography, for short), a site that, for me, couldn’t have been more timely: I was just finishing reading the last chapters of Robert Bringhurst’s master-work, The Elements of Typographic Style, the site’s inspiration.
Just as the book itself was beautifully set (as one would expect), well written, entertaining, and generally a joy to behold, the same can be said of Web Typography. From the subtle use of Flash for the logotype to the carefully set table of contents, everything about the site reeks of typographic quality, its own distinct style echoing that of the original Elements.
The purpose of Web Typography, of course, was not to supplant Elements as the definitive resource for typography - the Typographers’ Bible
, in the words of Herman Zapf - but rather to supplement it: to act as an unofficial companion for those working with type on the web.
It is with much excitement, then, that I’m announcing what will, hopefully, mark the start of a trend: my first contributions to Web Typography, §2.3.1: Set opening paragraphs flush left and §2.3.2: In continuous text, mark all paragraphs after the first with an indent of at least one en, have been published.
I’d like to thank Rich for the opportunity to be involved: he’s been incredibly supportive of my contributions. Like Rich, I’m not a professional typographer (or, in fact, anything more than ‘a guy who has an interest in typography’) but I’d like to hope that, with my contributions, I can help someone out there fall in love with typography and, more specifically, its applications online. If just one person learns to love typography a little more thanks to something I contribute, I’ll be happy.
So, I hope you enjoy what I hope will be the first of many contributions I make to Web Typography!
- §2.3.1: Set opening paragraphs flush left
- §2.3.2: In continuous text, mark all paragraphs after the first with an indent of at least one en
- Filed under:
- css
- Rich Rutter
- typography
- web
- web typography
Camp
When I was progressing through education, September was, naturally, a very busy time of year, with new starts and changes to the way my time was squandered: more homework, less homework, more socialising, less socialising, more free time, less free time. Generally, Septembers would set the tone for the rest of the year.
Since entering the real world, these flurries of activity seem to occur far more irregularly but this year is refreshingly different, with September being marked once more by a flurry of activity, much of which is an indicator (hopefully) of how the coming year will shape up.
The back-to-schoolcool build-up starts with Reading, over the last weekend of August. Whilst I’ve been to a fair few gigs, I’ve never been to Reading Festival before and I’m getting pretty excited about it now. Granted, some of the acts I’d been hoping to see have pulled out or simply weren’t going this year, but it still looks like there’s a decent line-up.
Then we enter September, and the web-standards conference year kicks off with a quick one-two punch of BarCamp London and d.Construct 2006. d.Construct 2005 was my first web-standards conference and, if last year - along with the line-up for this year - is anything to go by, this year should be stellar.
What is BarCampLondon? Think of it as a way to get the tech/geek community together in London at the end of the summer. What will happen during the event? Only one thing is certain: It’s up to you to decide. The most important thing you should take away from the event? Relationships with other geeks!
This openness permeates every facet of the ‘conference’: rather than a formal gathering at a conference venue, with all the attendees staying in the local swanky hotel at great expense, BarCampers are expected to bring a sleeping bag and pillow, and all find somewhere to camp at the venue. This, to me, is incredible: I’ve often said (although obviously not on nascentguruism, what with not posting much) that the biggest reason for attending any conference is the social aspect.
Add to that the idea that first-timers are expected to contribute (usually by way of presenting something or leading a discussion), and things really start getting exciting. This entirely demolishes the established ‘get an industry figurehead to talk from a pedestal’ approach: everyone is equal, and everyone has something to contribute.
And so I’ve landed my first public speaking gig.
4 Comments- Filed under:
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- Reading Festival
@media 2006
Muchos notes… These links will become less broken throughout the course of the conference.
Leave a comment if we met!
Update: I had an awesome time meeting lots of people… My notes are now up in plain-text format.
Day 1
09:00: Keynote Presentation (Eric Meyer)
10:45: Good Design vs. Great Design (Jon Hicks, Cameron Moll, and Veerle Pieters) or Using DOM Scripting to Plug the Holes in CSS (Jeremy Keith)
12:00: IE: 7 and Beyond (Chris Wilson) or Fine Typography on the Web (Dave Shea)
14:00: The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0 (Andy Clarke, Patrick Lauke, Gez Lemon, and Ian Lloyd) or Bug Hunting (Andy Budd)
15:30: Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps (Jeffrey Veen)
Day 2
09:00: Bulletproof Web Design (Dan Cederholm)
10:30: DOM Scripting: The Next Level (Cameron Adams, Peter-Paul Koch, Stuart Langridge, Dan Webb, and Simon Willison) or Beyond a Code Audit (Robin Christopherson)
11:45: Mobile Web Design (Cameron Moll) or Internationalisation: Awakening The Sleeping Giant (Molly E. Holzschlag)
13:45: Strategic CSS Management (Rachel Andrew, Andy Budd, Roger Johansson, and Dave Shea) or Yahoo! vs. Yahoo! (Nate Koechley)
15:00: The Fine Art of Web Design (Andy Clarke) or Microformats: Evolving the Web (Tantek Çelik)
16:30: ‘Hot Topics’ Panel
2 Comments- Filed under:
- @media
- conference
Where was I?
Apparently, Elly tagged me with this ‘where was I?’ meme, so I suppose I ought to follow it up:
Where was I… one year ago?
This time last year, I was working with Ben at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. As Ben noted, we would have been working on a Microsoft-SharePoint-based document management system. Unfortunately for Ben and I (and our other team-mate, Steve Hayter, who appears to have fallen off the face of the earth), we had short deadlines and large workloads.
As such, we were working long hours on hard problems, pushing one another to our mental limits. I recall one week in particular that I worked something in the region of seventy hours in five days. As one could imagine, trying to push my friends to work this way was a double edged sword: I wanted the work to be done, but I also didn’t want to have to make Ben and Steve do the stupid hours it would require.
Where was I… five years ago? (or ‘How to make Steve feel old’)
It took me a while to work this one out, but it seems that five years ago I would have been coming to the end of my first year at university. I’d met a bunch of people I now feel privileged enough to call my closest friends, spent lots of time avoiding work, and generally doing what university students do (well, other than the getting dangerously drunk part).
Where was I… ten years ago? (or ‘How to make Steve feel really old’)
I was coming up to the ripe old age of fourteen and would have been in year nine at Mill Chase Community School, four months from starting my GCSEs. I wasn’t big but, for my age, I might have been clever.
Who am I tagging?
- Jon
- Paul
- That’s it: I’m lazy.
- Filed under:
- Ben Ward
- Elly Thompson
- meme
Mac OS X Keyboard Layouts on Windows
Image courtesy of Ben
A while back, Ben was trying to replicate certain keyboard niceties from the wonderful Mac OS X in Windows. As a fellow superhero with an alter egoMac user by night, Windows user by day and utter pedant, I was intrigued, so decided to dig further into the problem.
Continue reading this entry …
9 Comments- Filed under:
- Apple
- Ben Ward
- hack
- Mac
- typography
- Windows
Suckswee
Apparently it’s nearly time for Fatty and me to make our way to SXSWi ’06. Tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, we’ll be leaving my house at some ungodly hour and heading to Gatwick, to fly with Continental to Austin, via Houston.
As Fatty mentioned, we’ll probably be spending some of the flight working out how we’re going to spend our time in Austin. Thanks to the wonders of SiteSucker, I have details for all the goings–on throughout the week direct from the SXSW site and loaded onto my iBook. The only certainty at this point is that we plan on spending Monday night fiddling with some shiny balls with the likes of The Molly (who is our team’s official cheerleader, apparently), Faruk (our team captain), Da Keith (a team–mate), and many, many more.
If you’re going to be at Suckswee, take a look at my about page, remember my face, and either try to avoid me like the plague (which I’d heartily recommend, if you value your sanity) or grab me and say ‘hi’.
I’d prefer the latter.
1 Comment- Filed under:
- conference
- David Thompson
- SXSW
You know you made the right decision buying a top-of-the-range PowerMac when…
Photoshop eats 100% of your dual 2.7GHz CPUs, 1.58GB of physical memory (out of a possible 2.5, if you were wondering), and 2.34GB of virtual memory:
- Filed under:
- Apple
- Mac OS X
- Photoshop
- PowerMac
‘Liveblogging’ Carson Summit
I’m at Carson Summit in London today. I’ll post properly later. In the meantime here’s the SubEthaEdit notes
1 Comment- Filed under:
- Carson Summit
- futureofwebapps
Four Things
Apparently, Ben’s poked another meme in my direction. Without further ado, here are my lists:
Four jobs I’ve had in my life
- Petrol–station assistant
- Checkout supervisor
- Technology analyst
- Information systems developer
Four movies I can watch over and over
- Lethal Weapon
- The Wedding Singer
- Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
- High Fidelity
Four TV shows I love to watch
- Family Guy
- QI
- Numb3rs
- X-Men: Evolution
Four places I have lived
- Bordon
- Um… Yeah…
Four places I have been on holiday
- Orlando, Florida, USA
- Paris, France
- Spain
- Nottingham
Four of my favourite dishes
- Carpaccio
- Bacon, sausage, and egg sarnie
- Whole packs of ’speciality’ meats (Parma ham,
- Anything with seafood (and mussels in particular)
Four websites I visit daily
- Gmail
- Ctrl+Alt+Del
- Sinfest
- This very site, in the hopes that the Magic Blog-Post Færies will have added content in my
lazinessabsence
Four places I would rather be right now
- Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure
- Paris
- Two feet to my right and three feet back, playing on my Xbox 360 whilst sat on my bed.
- With The Girlfriend
Four bloggers I am tagging
- Jonathan Relf
- Faruk Ateş
- Jeremy Keith
- Andy Budd
- Filed under:
- Ben Ward
- meme
Carson Workshops Summit
My d.Construct write-up is coming, honestly: it’s taking a bit longer than I expected, but it is on its way.
Another month, another conference booking. This time, The Boy WonderBen and I will be attending the Carson Workshops Summit on the 8th of February, 2006, with The JokerFatty in tow.
Rumour has it that Jeremy, Andy, Richard, and The Jon will be there, not to mention the speakers: Mister Mint, a Signal, and someone predictable, to name but a few.
Add to that the fact that it’s Ben’s birthday the day after, and it should make for an altogether good day/evening.
1 Comment- Filed under:
- Ben Ward
- Carson Workshops Summit
- conference
- David Thompson