Practice before Preaching

Whilst searching around today for some authoratative statements on web typography, I came across Richard Rutter's pages. This seems like it should be interesting. Unfortunately, however, as a web site it does not stand up very well. Flaws spring to the eye immediately. First, the home page seems to think it is a book cover. Cute, but for a start, surely the topic is quite clearly NOT print? And worse, the few links provided are at the bottom of the page, well below the "fold" on VGA screens (yes, people do still use them). Going a bit further, it gets worse. Viewed with IE6sp2, the text column on the Introduction page behaves very strangely. There seems to be a strange mouse over effect which rewraps the last paragraph, and the last line of the previous one, breaking the left margin alignment. In the next section, (Rhythm & Proportion), it gets worse. The formatting of the link list at the top right is clearly broken, and the links themselves are not clear. As for the Introduction section, the main body text suffers from some strange behaviour. Finally, the use of italics in the typography of the title, "The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web" doesn't seem to make much sense. Italics are used to convey emphasis, and here I cannot see what is being emphasised (or de-emphasised). To my mind, "The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web" is one version that would make more sense. Does all this matter? Yes, because I cannot recommend it to developers who havs a problem with text layout, issues, because they will immediately notice the implementation issues and mistrust the message. To me, the arbitrary use of text decoration reduces my confidence in the content. Since I followed a link from a site I have very high confidence in, Douglas Bowman's Stopdesign, overall I still trust the content. But this really illustrates that when the message is about the medium, the medium really is the message.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, David. If you’d don’t mind I’d like to answer some of your points.

The premise of the website is that it is based on a book; a translation if you like, of Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style into HTML and CSS. It maybe I should be making that far clearer, but anyway that should explain the book metaphor you’ve mentioned - I think it still works as a web page.

The ‘few’ links on the home page guide readers to the three logical places they should at in the site - the introduction, the table of contents or the latest addition (this a is a work in progress). I don’t agree with your assertion that the site should fit on a VGA screen without. Due to its liquid nature the site works comfortably within 800x600 and as the audience is comprised of web developers and designers this resolution is a safe minimum.

I hold my hand up to not having had the time to work around the bugs in IE6. I concede that this should and will be done, but in the meantime I satisfy myself that the text is still readable in that browser and that a large proportion of web designers know better than to use IE6.

The italics in the title on the home page are deliberately taken straight from the typography of the original book cover, as designed by Bringhurst. For visual consistency I carried this treatment through to the title on the underlying pages. I disagree with your implication that italics are used for emphasis alone. Italics are also used variously for titles, speech and extracts of foreign language, none of which are necessarily being emphasised. And anyway the title is display matter rather than body text so it is read very differently by the reader.

Thanks again for your comments - I hope you get a chance to read some of the content and that you find it of use to either yourself of your colleagues.

from Richard Rutter on Wed, January 11, 2006 - 8:35

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your reasoned response to my ranting

Certainly your site is of considerable benefit, and to be honest, I don’t for one moment consider myself better qualified to judge this that Douglas Bowman.

The principle problem is that it does have some very visible bugs in IE6 (which is almost certainly down to IE6, not your CSS), and this, unfortunately detracts from the message.  With me, you’re preaching to the converted, but what I’m trying to do is to reinforce my point to certain software developers using your site as my backup. Of course, they immediately point to the things that don’t work, as evidence against me….

Unfair, but so is life!

David

from David Mantripp on Wed, January 11, 2006 - 3:28

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