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Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

symbolset.com

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Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#51

> On the web, Symbolsets are supported in all major browsers. ...They work in modern browsers..." Does anybody know exactly what browsers and operating systems? IE6 on XP, for example? There's no chart, which makes me hesitant.

IE6 is not considered a modern browser.

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#53
post #52

This is interesting, but I couldn't find out how it works. Can anyone explain what "opentype ligature" is?

A ligature is a glyph that is inserted when two or more letters are used. For example, LaTeX inserts ligatures when you type "tt" to make the lines of the two "t"s join. It's a separate symbol that's "activated" when you type the right combination of characters.

Here, the combination "user" has a "user icon" ligature. It's really very simple, and clever.

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#54
post #18

This appears to be the current list of keywords: info subtract delete heart alert checkmark replay cart dropdown navigateup navigatedown twitter globe view user creditcard desktop cell search link reply

Thanks! I was getting a strong "old school text adventure" vibe from this interesting UX choice! YOU CAN TYPE TO SEE THE SYMBOLS. > facebook IM SORRY, I DONT UNDERSTAND 'facebook'. > music IM SORRY, I DONT UNDERSTAND 'music'. > help IM SORRY, I DONT UNDERSTAND 'help'. > f*#(@&F!!!

Well? Did it understand "f*#(@&F!!!"? Don't leave us hanging!

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#55
post #9

Perhaps it should also include a non-ligature way of displaying icons. In current accessibility practices, when you place a description after its image you are supposed to include an empty alt attribute. So say you have social icons... ◈ Facebook ◈ Twitter You are supposed to write Facebook Twitter As to cue screen readers to not read out loud filename or the alt attribute. In this case Symbolset works as the alt pro…

.icon { speak: none; }

Looks nice having CSS supporting non-visual presentation. Sounds like a job for @media queries too, so I looked up on the w3c website [0] and there are a bunch of non-visual targets along 'print' and 'screen', like 'aural' and 'braille'.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#56
post #42

Site seems very broken for me: http://i.imgur.com/2gLhE.png User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:8.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0.1

Firefox 8 ? Thirteen came out last week.

and "v.8.0, offered to release channel users on November 8th, 2011" the fact that FF has no concept of how to use version numbers means a difference of FIVE version numbers is ... well... meaningless. The only thing worth considering when it comes to FF versions these days is time since release, and eight months is not notably old.

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#57

> On the web, Symbolsets are supported in all major browsers. ...They work in modern browsers..." Does anybody know exactly what browsers and operating systems? IE6 on XP, for example? There's no chart, which makes me hesitant.

If by "work" you mean do something interesting when one of the suggested words are typed, I can report it doesn't work on my up-to-date Ubuntu.

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I was wondering about. I don't have any idea what OS+versions support OpenType ligatures, and what browsers on those OS's support them when the OS does, and both appear necessary.

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#58
post #18

This appears to be the current list of keywords: info subtract delete heart alert checkmark replay cart dropdown navigateup navigatedown twitter globe view user creditcard desktop cell search link reply

Thanks; I was especially thrown because I tried "home", which was the first example in the example image (!) but it didn't work and I thought I'd misunderstood what was going on. I guess I should have blindly tried others from that list, hoping for a different result. :P

Re: Symbolset - symbol font using clever opentype ligature hack

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "work" you mean do something interesting when one of the suggested words are typed, I can report it doesn't work on my up-to-date Ubuntu.

Thanks, that's the kind of thing I was wondering about. I don't have any idea what OS+versions support OpenType ligatures, and what browsers on those OS's support them when the OS does, and both appear necessary.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0
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