Is there a good way to create crisp, clear, LARGE font in webpages? I need to create a tag cloud effect on my homepage with different font sizes and colours.
I’ve got it set up in HTML/CSS but on the older browsers or OS’s which don’t support anti-aliasing as default it looks a bit… crappy.
I’ve played with sIFR, which worked beautifully but gave me some horrible load effects but I’m now wondering if there is a way to:
a) do browser/OS detection to split users by browser/OS combinations which I KNOW support anti-aliasing (they get raw HTML) and by ‘others’ who get an image tag.
b) Some sort of JavaScript to add antialiasing?
c) Permanent solution to load a BG image in the div and hide the HTML text. (I know, I know, Google horror stories about de-indexing… but is it possible?)
a) Of course you can use browser detection. The easiest way to do this is probably using jQuery‘s browser method. (jQuery is an awesome JavaScript library that makes a lot of JS-development easier in case you haven’t heard)
Depending on what browser (or OS) results you get, you could present the user with different solutions, from normal text to something like a Flash solution.
However, I advise against it. Things look better on new machines than old ones. That’s just the way it is, which is why I recommend against spending precious time on minor glitches in older browsers. — Unless users with older browsers are your main demographic of course. In this case, how about you just do it in Flash altogether? No use coding up two solutions if one always works, right?
b) You can in fact create anti-aliased text via JavaScript. Have a look at my project Die Stimme Gottes (‘Voice of God’ — not for the religiously squeamish) for an example. In this project, I used the excellent typeface.js for this.
c) Just use CSS, maybe?
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