fonts

A few MacFixIt readers have recently contacted me regarding an issue with not being able to view some PDFs that were made on their OS X systems after upgrading to OS X 10.6.7. This includes viewing the PDF on their Macs, as well as seeing them on other platforms such as Windows, iOS, and Linux.

Usually PDF rendering problems can happen if the system is experiencing font corruption; most of the time this can be tackled with a general maintenance routine to clear caches, coupled with checking and managing fonts with Font Book. In these cases the problems … Read more

Nokia Sans, one of the most familiar typefaces worldwide and a brand recognition money can't buy, is about to become irrelevant. The world's largest phone maker has unveiled a new font dubbed Nokia Pure for mobile and digital environments.

"Logically enough, the starting point for our brand new typeface, Nokia Pure, was also on-screen legibility at small sizes--although now we're talking about the pin-sharp color screens of contemporary smartphones," Nokia said in a blog post on its Brand Book site. "At the same time, we also needed a recognizable corporate typeface, versatile enough to work well in all manner of different environments--from other screen-based formats, to a whole host of printed materials."

Based on the concept of a seamless and fluid motion, the Nokia Pure typeface comprises rounded letters without serifs that "flow into each other" to create an impression of forward movement.… Read more

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is a big fan of typography. Before dropping out of Reed College and starting Apple, Jobs took a calligraphy class that he's since attributed to the inclusion of various fonts that are a part of the Mac OS. As it turns out, Microsoft is pretty interested in fonts, too, so much in fact, that font size has become a point of contention in the legal spat between the two companies over Apple's attempts at trademarking the term "App Store" as its own.

In a motion filed this morning with the … Read more

Opera Software, a browser maker with considerable sway among Web developers, is trying to get them to embrace WOFF, the Web Open Font Format that looks like the best chance so far that refined typography will come to the Web.

WOFF originated at Mozilla after a collaboration with type designers, with Microsoft and Opera sponsoring its standardization at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), so it's no surprise that Opera is on board with the project. Opera 11.10, still in testing, adds support for WOFF.

Firefox, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9, and Google's Chrome already support WOFF, … Read more

OS X is a very attractive operating system; however, it has received some criticism for having a relative lack of customization options. While Windows and Linux have had fairly detailed options for adjusting overall themes and individual colors and fonts used, OS X has kept its visual elements fairly standardized.

The only options Apple offers for changing themes are in the Appearance section, where you can choose between the default Blue or Graphite options for buttons, menus, and windows. In addition, you can change a few other features such as placement of scrolling buttons, text highlight color, scrolling behaviors, and … Read more

Monotype Imaging, showing further signs of adapting the old-school world of typographic design to the new era of technology, has acquired privately owned Ascender for $10.2 million.

The Woburn, Mass.-based company has been ramping up its effort to adapt to new media where fonts are used, launching its Web-based font service in September. The Ascender acquisition--for $7 million in cash and $3.2 million in stock--gives them a foothold in the smartphone world.

That's because Ascender designed typefaces including Droid for Google's Android operating system and Segoe WP for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. The company … Read more

We recently covered a few approaches to fixing abnormally small or large text on Web pages, including the use of the zoom function, removing cookies, and managing system fonts. In addition to these approaches for fixing or adjusting font problems on Web pages, another thing to keep in mind is how Safari and other browsers manage the default font settings for a Web page.

While most Web sites will set a specific typeface (such as Arial or Georgia instead of Times), there are two ways that a site can handle font sizes: relative and absolute, and the use of these … Read more

Every now and then a Web site may appear practically illegible because of small font sizes in articles. Though most Web sites display in relatively standard 12- to 14-point font sizes, there are some that cram more text in by using sizes 10- or 11-point font sizes. Sometimes even if a site is set to display in a relatively large font, errors or odd settings with browsers may result in the font sizes being changed.

The first thing to try if a site's text seems abnormally small or large is to view it with a new browser, especially one … Read more

One of the major components essential for the future of Firefox just landed in the beta build of the browser, and it gives the open-source browser the page-rendering speed boost that it had been lacking.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Firefox 4 beta 7 introduces JagerMonkey, Mozilla's next-generation JavaScript engine that puts the browser in the same ballpark as its high-speed competitors. The old TraceMonkey engine was slow enough to no longer be in the same league as Chrome, Opera, Safari, and the Internet Explorer 9 beta.

Mozilla describes the improvements as incorporating the JagerMonkey JIT compiler into … Read more