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Tufte CSS

daveliepmann.com

11–20 of 107 posts

Re: Tufte CSS

#12

Cute idea. Needs a better example document to really be judged properly (for example, this document has a far too many large and imposing headings), but in any case, some comments: Would be better with less leading, a smaller text size, smaller left margin, and more characters per line. This current version has a text block more like a newspaper column width than a book, and the large type and unnecessarily generous…

I get why people want their web sites to look as good as Tufte's books, but since they can't, I wish they wouldn't try. Make things that look good in the medium you're working in; don't blindly copy the rules from other media.

Re: Tufte CSS

#14

This seems like an okay idea, but does anyone feel that the italics used in the headings (font family: ETBembo) are generated and are quite ugly?

Indeed, that's a faux italic[1] created by the browser in the absence of a real italic font. Perhaps the author forgot to include Bembo Italic[2] in the @font-face declaration (or simply decided not to pay for it)?

[1] http://alistapart.com/article/say-no-to-faux-bold

[2] https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/bembo/

Re: Tufte CSS

#15

This seems like an okay idea, but does anyone feel that the italics used in the headings (font family: ETBembo) are generated and are quite ugly?

They are generated. The only web-font being loaded is the Roman style (upright), and the browser is mechanically skewing it to try to replicate the italic. This is really noticeable when it's done to serifed typefaces, because the italic forms are based on a different model of writing and change significantly.

Re: Tufte CSS

#16
Personally, I feel like the text is too big.

Medium's site is already on the upper end of what I consider to be a usable font size (22px), and this is even larger (24px). At some point, larger type makes it difficult to quickly scan the page.

For comparison, even Tufte's own site is rendered with a 16px font.

Re: Tufte CSS

#18
post #9

This seems like an okay idea, but does anyone feel that the italics used in the headings (font family: ETBembo) are generated and are quite ugly?

The italics are basically the only thing that looks OK here: http://i.imgur.com/H9X3Hpl.png Linux/Firefox FWIW.

Linux / Firefox has long been the most horrible combo for font rendering - check out Chrome on OSX http://imgur.com/jsHwIk7

Re: Tufte CSS

#20

Honestly, this is really rough. The impulse is admirable, but the implementation has a lot of rough edges and ugliness. A web author looking for good typography is going to be better served reading Butterick's Practical Typography ( http://practicaltypography.com/ ).

It doesn't have the meticulous shine of Tufte's books, but this is a straightfoward CSS guide. It's a starting point, don't you think?

Butterick's implementation is more than a CSS guide though, right? I thought his design was to show off the power of Pollen[0], his online-book-publishing system.

[0] http://pollenpub.com/

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