Mar 12 2009
I was recently doing some inspirational research and came across a site that implemented [sIFR](http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/), which for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a method for using favorite fonts on websites without using a static graphic. (We used to use it here on our site but have since moved away from it.)
*Click for larger view* See anything odd? I'm seeing double. What's going on here is that sIFR was not implemented correctly. Or rather, it was (because it's working and showing up – the first line in the repeated areas is the "sIFR-ed" text) but not fully tested. The way sIFR works is it uses Flash, JavaScript and CSS to detect which pieces of text should be replaced with a particular font. Part of that involves "hiding" the "normal" font in order to replace it with the desired font. In this case the hiding isn't happening. My point here isn't to bag on the designer(s). They've done a good job and deciding to use sIFR is a good move. But they somehow missed this issue in their testing phase. So my point is really to remind you – designers and clients – that testing and reviewing before launch is absolutely crucial if you don't want to look silly.
*Click for larger view* See anything odd? I'm seeing double. What's going on here is that sIFR was not implemented correctly. Or rather, it was (because it's working and showing up – the first line in the repeated areas is the "sIFR-ed" text) but not fully tested. The way sIFR works is it uses Flash, JavaScript and CSS to detect which pieces of text should be replaced with a particular font. Part of that involves "hiding" the "normal" font in order to replace it with the desired font. In this case the hiding isn't happening. My point here isn't to bag on the designer(s). They've done a good job and deciding to use sIFR is a good move. But they somehow missed this issue in their testing phase. So my point is really to remind you – designers and clients – that testing and reviewing before launch is absolutely crucial if you don't want to look silly.