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The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

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Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three things: ① I believe this only affects macOS, and has no effect on any other platform. ② There’s no such property as font-smoothing. Only -webkit-font-smoothing and -moz-osx-font-smoothing, with their different values. ③ Attempting to control this is highly controversial. You may prefer it one way, but others may prefer it otherwise. See, for example, https://usabilitypost.com/2012/11/05/stop-fixing-font-smooth.…

Ha, you're right about `font-smoothing` - it appears in the OP CSS like this but I guess they meant `font-smooth` [1] (which has a giant red warning akin to what you said). > As a generalisation, you should not do things like this, but leave it to the platform or the user to decide. Tailwind also does it (e.g. see the CSS behind this page [2]). Those guys wrote probably my all-time favourite resource on UI design [3]…

Even font-smooth isn’t a thing, never was. It was part of a very early draft, and dropped, unimplemented, something like twenty years ago because people realised it was a bad idea and had no place in CSS.

As for Tailwind, speaking bluntly: Tailwind includes some terrible ideas. Just because it supports something, or even because they use it on their own page, doesn’t mean it’s good. (I mean really, just look at that “Applying conditionally” subsection! Changing antialiasing technique on hover or by media query? Have they completely taken leave of their senses!?) Some people like the font-smoothing change. Others loathe it. Overall, changing from normal behaviour is hazardous.

Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#12
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, you're right about `font-smoothing` - it appears in the OP CSS like this but I guess they meant `font-smooth` [1] (which has a giant red warning akin to what you said). > As a generalisation, you should not do things like this, but leave it to the platform or the user to decide. Tailwind also does it (e.g. see the CSS behind this page [2]). Those guys wrote probably my all-time favourite resource on UI design [3]…

Even font-smooth isn’t a thing, never was. It was part of a very early draft, and dropped, unimplemented, something like twenty years ago because people realised it was a bad idea and had no place in CSS . As for Tailwind, speaking bluntly: Tailwind includes some terrible ideas. Just because it supports something, or even because they use it on their own page, doesn’t mean it’s good. (I mean really, just look at that…

Here is a somewhat convincing argument why it can be considered a “fix” for MacOS [1]

I have found this to be true with some fonts - they’re excessively thick on MacOS with the default subpixel antialiasing.

1. https://icomoon.io/news/grayscale-antialiasing

Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#13
post #2

In response to physical damage or even starvation, they take a leap back in their development process, transforming back into a polyp. In a process that looks remarkably like immortality, the born-again polyp colony eventually buds and releases medusae that are genetically identical to the injured adult. In fact, since this phenomenon was first observed in the 1990s, the species has come to be called “the immortal je…

Yes, like many plants and fungi, jellyfish exhibit “alternation of generations” with both an asexual and a sexual reproduction stage. Since the forms are usually far different in size, one biologist remarked it’s as if a woman gives birth to a mouse and then a mouse to a woman.

Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#14
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only other trick I know is the super white trick which is whiter than the brightest white

> Only other trick I know is the super white trick which is whiter than the brightest white How do you do that? That sounds cool! Make everything else #eee?

Prepare to get blown the fuck away: https://notes.dt.in.th/HDRQRCode

Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even font-smooth isn’t a thing, never was. It was part of a very early draft, and dropped, unimplemented, something like twenty years ago because people realised it was a bad idea and had no place in CSS . As for Tailwind, speaking bluntly: Tailwind includes some terrible ideas. Just because it supports something, or even because they use it on their own page, doesn’t mean it’s good. (I mean really, just look at that…

Here is a somewhat convincing argument why it can be considered a “fix” for MacOS [1] I have found this to be true with some fonts - they’re excessively thick on MacOS with the default subpixel antialiasing. 1. https://icomoon.io/news/grayscale-antialiasing

The biggest idiosyncrasy of Apple’s font rendering is what they horribly misname “font smoothing” in their UI, which is actually glyph dilation: by default, they make glyphs a little thicker than they were designed.¹ This is considered a feature of macOS. A frustrating feature that I wish didn’t exist (I strongly suspect it’s a contributing factor to many uses of font-weight 300 or less, which are inappropriately thin for body text on all other platforms), but a feature nonetheless.

If the greyscale antialiasing in a browser doesn’t do that (I don’t know), honestly, that’s a bug, if it leads to it rendering things inconsistently with the rest of the platform.

I also strongly suspect that argument will be at least partially obsolete, as there were major changes the next year. Far too many people talking about these things cite articles from 2010–2017, even though the environmental conditions have changed radically since then, and they don’t tend to reexamine them and clarify if they’re still completely accurate.

—⁂—

¹ 0.3px at typical body text sizes: https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/918991457532354560, https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/918593367914803201.

Re: The Immortal Jellyfish (2015)

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only other trick I know is the super white trick which is whiter than the brightest white How do you do that? That sounds cool! Make everything else #eee?

Prepare to get blown the fuck away: https://notes.dt.in.th/HDRQRCode

That's very cool lol
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