Farmhouse Studios : The Balance Sheet

The Future of Fonts on Your Web Site

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:59:49 GMT

A perennial challenge in web design centers on fonts or, more accurately, typography. Because your web site can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, actual text (opposed to a graphic) forces us to use fonts that are commonly found on ALL computers whether PC, Mac or otherwise so the page looks consistent. These tend to be standard fonts like Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Helvetica etc...

This has worked out fine but restricts the use of any other font to a graphic which is not good because graphic are inaccessible - that is, they can not be read by screen readers or other assistive devices used by the sight impaired.

Fortunately, a new trend is emerging....font services. Soon to launch TypeKit allows a web site to "subscribe" to a font library for around $50 a year. Using the tag : @font-face, any font in that library can be imported into your site instantly and used as real text. If it takes off it will be revolutionary for web design and development.

We've tested Typekit and think it's a go. Don't get too excited however. We'll still push you to use a standard font for basic copy. No one wants to read a cursive script on the web.

Twitter, Non-profits, and Customer Relations Management

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:29:03 GMT

Many non-profit CEOs or executive directors ask me about the use of Twitter, almost always with a smirk of skepticism. Would people really follow them? Outside the obvious event or fundraiser promotion - what would they tweet? While pushing content out to one's base is important - that's not the way to think about twitter.

It was relatively late in the game that Twitter made perfect sense to me - it's the ideal, no...perfect tool for knowing your customer base, competitors, donors, whatever population you're trying to keep a pulse on. It's not so much about the push (tweeting) as the pull (following). I use twitter daily to keep track of what's going on in several Boston industries - restaurant, education, museums, non-profit - any field where I have clients or wish to have clients. Precisely because of the short length of each message and the relative ease to publish it, people tend to publish thoughts, goals, small daily events that you can't get from following the trades and certainly aren't going to find out at that next mixer.

Select the people, businesses or organizations that you want or need to know and follow them. Not sure who to follow? See who others are following. Soon, you will have a collective pulse of what's going on around town (or further out if you choose) while also being seen as someone who's interested in that business or person....good basic customer relations management.

Our Position on Supporting IE 6 in Standard Web Development Contracts

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:40:29 GMT

Quality assurance takes a lot of time in web development. Why is this such an issue? Very simply put - each browser has different settngs built in that support HTML code in different ways. Most currently released browsers support HTML in the same way. However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6, released in September 2002 and replaced by IE 7 in October 2006 did not support even the most basic web standards - so much so that Microsoft had to create a special hidden tag that we developers add to all web pages. This hidden tag essentially allows us to create a second version of the page just for Internet Explorer - meaning twice the work for the same result...thus higher costs.

Because even Microsoft does not support IE 6 any longer (after all they released IE 8 in March 2009) and that it sometimes literally doubles the work, many developers are charging extra to create special code for IE 6 or refusing to support it at all. Frankly, we're struggling with this issue and have opted, for now, to strongly encourage people to upgrade on the sites we develop but not charge a specific "tax" for it....as long as clients understand that some of the cool things they see on the web these days simply won't work at all on IE 6.

Visible Tweets

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:12:18 GMT

We just love this site. Beyond being mesmerizing, it serves as a cool messaging tool at events. Holding an event where monitors are available? Go to Visible Tweets, enter in your twitter name, click full screen and watch people become hooked on reading your organization's tweets. The service also pulls in all mentions of your twitter account adding an even more powerful, and interesting, effect.

Lots of fun and an effective way of getting people to follow you on twitter. http://visibletweets.com

Why do we have blog?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:12:18 GMT

Believe me when I say I don't believe the world needs another web developer's blog. Other web development firms have done a great job of using blogs to give us a wide range of topics on best uses of the web. In fact, when we walked out of our first meeting on our web site re-design there was no blog on the list. But then the very words I use with our clients kept haunting me - your web site is a tool not a brochure, use it as such! Maybe our blog could actually be a useful tool for our clients and others struggling to navigate their business online.

What do people looking for web development want? In my experience they want an understanding of what the web affords them without long technical explanations. It's very hard to explain useful web technologies as I watch eyes glass over. No worries - I get it. Time is short and people want to use technology not learn it.

So here's my commitment for this blog. I will take commonly asked questions and key web trends that I think are key for organizations and promise to discuss them well in 250 words or less. No techno-speak, simply how I'd explain it if asked in the check-out line at the grocery store (it's happened). This is harder that you may think but let's see how it goes. Hopefully, people will find this useful.

Jim Moore
Principal and Founder
FarmHouse Studios

P.S. To keep me honest there's a word count below each article.