Web Typography Hack: sIFR

Jeff Atwood

22 Dec 2005 — 1 min read — Comments

Although I'm no fan of ~~Macromedia~~Adobe 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.

Stay Gold, America

We are at an unprecedented point in American history, and I'm concerned we may lose sight of the American Dream.

The Great Filter Comes For Us All

With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven't any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now? (Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the Story of Your Life novella it was based on

I Fight For The Users

If you haven't been able to keep up with my blistering pace of one blog post per year, I don't blame you. There's a lot going on right now. It's a busy time. But let's pause and take a moment

The 2030 Self-Driving Car Bet

It's my honor to announce that John Carmack and I have initiated a friendly bet of $10,000* to the 501(c)(3) charity of the winner’s choice: By January 1st, 2030, completely autonomous self-driving cars meeting SAE J3016 level 5 will be commercially available for passenger

Read more

Stay Gold, America

The Great Filter Comes For Us All

I Fight For The Users

The 2030 Self-Driving Car Bet