[thelist] .gif text

Greg Strange gstrange at e-tsi.com
Thu Jul 6 20:30:01 CDT 2000


on 7/6/00 6:41 PM, Peggy Daniels at pegdaniels at hotmail.com wrote:

> Hail thelist....
> 
> This is no doubt a very basic question.  My asking it anyway is probably
> going to cause many of you to totally discount anything I may have to say in
> the future :)
> 
> Is it ever ok to have .gif text?
> 
> For example, I'm thinking of logos that are mostly or only text, and have to
> display in a particular font because the words are the whole logo (with the
> obligatory swoosh, of course).  Or, maybe a header that appears on all
> pages, that is some kind of image map with text on it too, with the text
> parts being links.  Is it ok to have .gif text for links or whatever, if
> there are also plain text equivalents elsewhere on the page?
> 
> If the answer is "no, images should never ever contain text" then I have a
> follow-up question (again, revealing the holes in my knowledge):  How is it
> possible to use any kind of special font if it's not in an image?  Not for
> the body of content on a page, of course, but for the other parts like the
> above-mentioned logo or some crazy navbar style that a client wants used.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any thoughts you all might have.....

I used to use a lot of gifs to make text appear the way I want it to.  But
then when I (sloowwly) began to realise how much difference there was
between plats and browsers, I looked for other ways to do things.

Regarding the logo, I don't have a good answer for you there and I would say
that you would probably be well-served to use a gif (or JPG) for the logo.
I say this with copyrights in mind which often are so specific as to be the
distance between two words, whether there is a period, the height of a
particular letter in relation the remaining text, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

As for titling, I use CSS now and it works wonderfully.  Everything scales
with browsers and monitor sizes; I can make changes to that text once and it
follows every page.  Now, I know what you are going to say and that is
actually *my* follow-up question.

"What is the best way to inform visitors of the font selection (if you use a
non-standard font) and how do you handle people getting it?  Do you make a
link to a fontxxx.com or keep a copy of the font on the website?"

Perspective from a new guy,
Greg Strange





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