For anyone out there who ends up creating images for titling (because sIFR is too complex to set up or otherwise) I recommend Cufón (pronounced koo-fone, like “I love the features of the iPhone.” “Yeah, it’s a pretty koo-fone.”)
It creates an image of your text on the fly with javascript. It uses the canvas element in all browsers that support it and for IE it uses VML.
I haven’t run it though any extensive tests but in everything I’ve tried it seems very promising. They are aware of some current limitations, foremost among them being selectable text. They’re working on a solution. Check it out; it may save you some Photoshop time and bandwidth costs.
case study
Hot and graceful jQuery dropcaps
Dropcaps are a staple of magazine and newspaper design, but aren’t always the easiest to implement on the web. Using this little jQuery and CSS tutorial, you can easily add hot little dropcaps to your web articles without bothering your developers. This method will also let you sleep at night knowing your caps will degrade gracefully, displaying just fine in browsers without CSS or JavaScript enabled.
Please note, this tutorial is for those who are familiar with jQuery and CSS. No basics taught here. Also nerd alert.
case study
JavaScript and screen readers
In recent months, many web designers have been asking the question, “How can I make my dynamic site accessible?” Unfortunately, good answers have been slow in coming from the accessibility community. While some articles have touched on the problem, not many have gone into details. Here is our first attempt at rectifying this situation.
“Then we program the web site using a fast guy in tights and a movie about coffee.”Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss, explaining the company’s use of Flash and javascript…
ModalBox is a cool javascript/ajax modal dialog library that uses Prototype and Scriptaculous. Very cool Mac style popups and forms (and no iframes!).