Greg Wilson – What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True from CUSEC on Vimeo.

We recently rolled out a new menu system that uses the downloadable font “Helvetica Neue Condensed Bold” for the menu’s main font. It’s very clear, very bold and makes a great menu font. We use WebFonts.fonts.com and it’s completely licensed. They run a great service so check them out. The project is drupal 6 based but we forgo their interface to do a simple CSS include at the top of the page.

The problem we ran into after the menu was rolled out… Government computers are configured with a security level in Internet Explorer that prohibits font downloading and doesn’t allow the user to change it. Why would they do that? No idea. I don’t know the network administrators, but if I had to guess it would be out of ignorance about downloadable fonts, they would rather disallow it rather than allow it and have it become a security threat. Whatever the reason, i’m not going to change their security settings.

So i’m faced with the problem that the substitute font makes several parts of the menu lay out incorrectly. We thoroughly tested the code before it went out the door, but what we didn’t test was a computer system that disallows downloadable fonts. It simply wasn’t on the radar.

In the process, I cam across a genius jQuery Plugin that allows you to test for alternate fonts. The plugin allows you to specify fonts via jQuery call, which I don’t like, but the “test font” method was particularly interesting.


testFont: function(requested_font, baseline_font) {
var span = $('<span id="font_tester" style="font-family:' + baseline_font + '; font-size:144px;position:absolute;left:-10000px;top:-10000px;visibility:hidden;">mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmml</span>');
$("body").prepend(span);

var baseline_width = span.width();
span.css(“font-family”, requested_font + “,” + baseline_font );
var requested_width = span.width();
span.remove();

// If the dimensions change, the font is installed
return (requested_width != baseline_width);
}

What it does is create a div offstage and give it a default font which you specify, grab the width, give it the control font in question and if the width changes, it's assumed the font has downloaded. Completely brilliant.

I combined it with a body-level class and specified css classes for the hobbled copies of IE:

if (! $.fontunstack.testFont("Helvetica W01 Bd Cn", "Arial")){
$("body").addClass("perfmenu-nofonts");
}

Now I can create an alternate width that will be big enough for the default font and prepend that style with body.perfmenu-nofonts

Pushing it to production in the next 24 hours.

Mediocrity is easy. Excellence is difficult.

“Why was this done this way?”
“Because i had to get it out the door.”
“But doing it correctly would have saved time.”
“The client was screaming, it just needed to get done.”

It’s an incredibly frustrating conversation every time I have it. I understand progressive knowledge. You do it the way you know to do it until you learn a better way. But these are seasoned developers who regularly turn out very mediocre work (or worse) and then defend it like they’ve created the next iPad.

I’ve always told myself that in order to get better I need to be with people who are better than I am and be pulled kicking and screaming into excellence.

Someone once told me the things that make you the most angry are the things you hate about yourself that you see in other people. I guess the reason i makes me so angry is because i’ve been guilty of doing it and I hate myself when I reflect on projects where i’ve done just that.

It’s not that I’m irreligious or hate god or the church. I don’t. I just like to carve out at least one day in a week where I’m not bound by a time-based schedule. My rebellion is not against the Almighty, but against the almighty clock. Relaxing at a restaurant drinking champagne cocktails at 10 am is the ultimate fuck you to time-based schedules.

Brunch alone is thoughtful and introspective, but brunch with friends is the best. Talking about war, religion, politics letting the conversation and mood drift from topic to topic… Some of the best times I’ve had.

I’m sitting, as I type, at Freddies Beach Bar in Arlington, Virginia and typing this on my iPad. The news, sports, and Sunday talk shows are on almost every TV in the room, but no one is paying any real attention to what is happening in the world at the moment. Today, it’s about brunch.