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Neat ideas. He mentions "true to browser type rendering" multiple times, which basically means "shitty type rendering." Browsers, at worst IE and followed clos
by dcurtis 16y ago
Neat ideas.
He mentions "true to browser type rendering" multiple times, which basically means "shitty type rendering." Browsers, at worst IE and followed closely by Firefox, are horribly bad at performing proper antialiasing for some reason. (The only exception to this rule is Safari, which does a decent job.)
I don't think we should bring the ridiculous shortcomings of browsers backwards into our design/mockup apps. I think we should continue designing stuff in a way that doesn't force us to conform to the lowest common denominator. Sure the depictions we might see in design apps are not strictly "accurate", but I don't have problems watching the graceful degradation of my designs through the various browsers.
It's the browsers that need improved type/graphics rendering, the not mockup/design applications that need to bow down to them.
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Finally, I don't know if it's actually a good idea to create a web-focused design app yet. We're still in the very early days of the web, and I don't think the long term conventions and standards are in place yet. We're in the flux. The blank, non-assuming canvases in Photoshop and Illustrator are good for fostering new ideas and pushing forward the state of art on the web.
That those apps weren't designed strictly for the web might end up being a net positive, especially as we go into the future and define what the web will look like in the long term.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- blehn 16y agoAgree that emulating browser type rendering isn't necessarily good in the long term, but why not build in support for a variety of different type rendering engines? Adobe is halfway there with Smooth, Strong, Crisp, etc... they could simply add options for WebKit, Firefox, IE... Also, a web-focused app may not be necessary, but I think a digital-focused app is (well, I guess that would be Fireworks). Photoshop and Illustrator really are terrible tools for designing digital applications, for the simple fact that working with pixel-level detail is a pain in the ass (e.g. try making a 92px by 147px rectangle with no sub-pixel edges in one of those applications). Fireworks actually comes pretty darn close to what Jason is asking for, but Adobe seems to neglect its core functionality in favor of expanding on useless export options and plugins.
- bobbygrace 16y agoI would love to see additional type rendering options, but this would have to account for the OS as well and Adobe tools would have to accept WOFF and EOT files, which counters FontFont's point of offering web fonts DRM-free. And I still don't think there will be a tool that makes code better than a hand, not that such a tool couldn't assist in a great way. TextMate snippets and CSS preprocessors maybe, but that's not exactly WYSIWYG to HTML.