I am searching for a very important though very small thing that will make my life better in countless ways. In the old days, Eudora for Mac used a font called Mishawaka to render emails. I loved it and used it everywhere a fixed-width font was called for – in BBEdit, browsers, other email programs, etc. Trouble is, I can’t seem to find a standalone version anywhere. Does anyone out there have any pointers for me? Why is this pretty little typeface so hard to find?
Update – I ended up following a recommendation from a correspondent. I downloaded an old copy of Eudora and got the font from there. It turns out, though, that it is also available at an old UMich archive.
The question on the table
: Are tables really evil? Well, no they’re not. But they were never intended to be used to format web pages, and so now that there’s a better solution (CSS), they should no longer be used that way. Tables are still completely viable in HTML – but for displaying tabular data.
Why? Why, really, should anyone change? The best answer is this: for the same reason Userland developed Radio. Radio solves (as do other systems) a big problem: separating content from style. Trouble is, there are three variables, not just two.
Content – we know about that. Style – we know about that too. But there’s also structure to consider. Using CSS allows us to separate structure from style. This is as powerful, in its own way, as separating content from style, and just as important.
By using CSS to format my pages (though I do have one table still kicking around, unfortunately), I get to present items that any device can understand. If some bit of text is a very important heading on the page, I don’t obscure the fact by coding it with font tags and hiding it in a table that’s purely there to place it in a prominent position on the page. I call it what it is: h1. Simple, clean.
Most importantly, though, suddenly it no longer matters what device is trying to “display” or render my page. Anything at all will see that and display that bit of text as the most important thing on that page.
Why is that important? Well, because as Dave Winer says, the web should be a great writing environment – which implies that it should equally be a great reading environment. When I’m writing, I’m only concerned about me – my ability to write well and have it appear. To make it a great reading environment – and thus support the other side of the coin – I can’t just care about me, I have to care about everyone else as well. And the fewer assumptions I make about them the better. Who am I to insist that they use a certain device to look at my page? They read, their choice. Why should I make them track down an alternate version which may or may not work on their particular device?
If you want the web to be a great writing environment, you also want it to be a great reading environment. And that means using CSS to provide the style, HTML (or XHTML) deployed in templates to provide the structure, and a CMS to feed the content. It’s quite simple, actually.
Apple has redesigned
their Technical Note format, and altough it’s really dry information of a technical nature, in its own way it’s quite beautiful. A subdued but good use of fonts, good in-file linking that’s well distinguished from the rest of the page, a good executive summary at the top, the date of publication/update is prominently displayed, and they use shading and an indent to very clearly highlight code. And there’s a PDF equivalent available at the bottom, cause no matter how nice it looks online, a PDF will print better. Form following function, to ape the famous old line, but not devoid of form as many techies assume is appropriate for other techies.
This is so cool
: WhatTheFont will interpret an image of text and return a list of possible fonts used to make it. It didn’t work very well on my little “mikel.org” logo above – doubtless because of the yellow line underneath – but still, it’s pretty cool. [via caroline]
Heard today
at my weekly soccer game in Parc Lafontaine: CRACK (or perhaps CRUNCH is more accurate – probably both). As I came down from a wild header attempt into a little hole in the grass. I sprained my ankle quite severely, to the extent that I felt it necessary to go to the Royal Vic emergency room to check that it wasn’t broken. The sound of my ankle doing what it did was quite chilling – though nothing compared to an ACL that blows during a ski race or something, which sounds like a muffled gun shot. I was very happy with my hospital experience – even on a Sunday evening, I was in and out in under an hour, including x-rays and a very thorough consult with the attending emerg doc. And of course it didn’t cost me a cent. Long live socialized health care.
