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NBD News
October 23, 2008

NBD News for October 2008!

In this edition of NBD News, I'm excited to introduce my aunt's company, Roll Over Rover, as my Featured Client. In the What's Next section, I take a look at the pros and cons of the Amazon Associates program. This month's Explainer delves into the use of fonts on the web, and News and Notes follows up with a peek at the future of web fonts. As always, please let me know if there are topics you'd like me to address in future editions, or if you have any questions.

Featured Client: Roll Over Rover

I recently redesigned the website for my aunt's company, Roll Over Rover, Inc. It was a great experience to build the previous site, which was a consumer e-commerce site, but having to deal with security, payment processing, and the e-commerce software Zen Cart made me keep the design simple and a little spartan. The new incarnation of the site is geared more towards retailers, and its main purpose is to showcase the designs and give information on purchasing. Freed from the previous constraints, the new site is much more in line with Roll Over Rover's brand and personality. I've also gotten to tackle some interesting design challenges like an order form and cutsheets, that I don't normally have occasion to do.

What's Next: Amazon Associates

I have mentioned on my blog that writing Amazon reviews is one online way to establish yourself as an authority in your line of business, but you can also make money (up to 15% of purchases) from product recommendations on your own website, through the Amazon Associates program. The program is free to sign up for, and allows you to embed different types of links to products on Amazon. A couple of days ago I got an email from the Amazon Associates program, touting a new and improved interface. I tried out several of the linking methods and wrote up my findings in a blog post . To summarize, it's fairly easy to make a fancy, bells-and-whistles "Amazon widget" for your site, but simple linking of product images or titles is still unneccessarily complicated. You can see examples of a couple of the widgets (a product slideshow and my wishlist) on my blog.

If you're interested in having a recommendations widget, or maybe posting your own Amazon wishlist on your site, drop me a line!

Explainer: Fonts on the Web

Clients often ask if the font from their logo or header can be used elsewhere on the site--in headlines, navigation, etc. Design considerations aside, there are technical reasons why this often isn't possible.

Your web browser, similar to other software programs, must be able to access a font on your computer in order for it to display text in that font. This limits the fonts available for use on the web to those that are common across a variety of operating systems, which is why text on the web is usually set in Helvetica, Arial, Times, Georgia, etc.--these fonts are installed on a high percentage of consumer computers. Web designers look at tables like these , and statistics like these, to determine what fonts are safe to use. The fancy type in a logo (and sometimes navigation) is actually an image, not text at all. This allows you to use any font you like, but complicates updating.

News and Notes: Embedded fonts

On the topic of fonts on the web, I recently read an excellent post by Chris Coyier on the web-design blog CSS-Tricks. It lays out very clearly the state of "embedded fonts," which is an exciting possibility for the future of web fonts. In this system, a website uses a font file purchased by the website owner and installed on a web server (not the user's computer). So if I have a site selling art nouveau posters, and I want to use Kolo for the headlines, I purchase that font and code my website to point to the file on a remote server, whether it be my own or the font vendor's. As the article explains, the hold-up in the adoption of this technology is font vendors' and creators' legitimate concern over piracy. Some browsers already support this method, but for most quality, paid-for fonts, it is illegal. Read the post if you're interested in how font embedding is supposed to work, and what the problems are with it.