Coding Horror

programming and human factors

Web Typography Hack: sIFR

Although I'm no fan of MacromediaAdobe Flash, I have to admit the sIFR JavaScript / Flash typography hack is remarkably well thought out and quite effective. Here's a small GIF movie of it in action:


It always bugged me that our only alternative for decent web typeface rendering was the misconceived <font> tag, or even worse, a bunch of hand-constructed image files masquerading as text. This is the best solution I've seen so far. It's in use on a few high-profile sites such as ABC News; check out the headline for this ABC News article on Don Ho, for example.

Heck, it's almost enough to get me to enable Flash again. Almost.

Mike Davidson, the original progenitor of the sIFR technique, recently handed the reins of development for sIFR to Mark Wubben, who is working on sIFR 3.

Written by Jeff Atwood
