Limitations imposed by web-safe fonts lead some designers to seek out alternative methods
of creating online type. It’s common to use graphics (mostly GIFs, but sometimes
Flash, due to its vector-based, scalable nature) for text. If you have to follow a corporate
design style under pain of death, the ability to use graphics can be a lifesaver—after all,
most browsers happily render images, and they can be marked up within heading elements,
so you can control things like margins via CSS and also retain the structural
integrity of your document.
However, graphical text has its share of problems:
Some browsers do not enable you to resize graphical text in a browser.
Because the Web is low-resolution, when a page is printed out, graphical text looks
pixilated and of poor quality.
Although GIF-based text tends to be small in terms of file size, it’s still larger than
HTML-based text.
People using alternate browsers, such as screen readers, cannot “see” graphical text
(although you can use the alt attribute to compensate).
Graphical text cannot be copied and pasted.
Graphical text cannot be read by search engines.
Graphical text is a pain to update. To change a word, you must rework the original
image, export and upload it, and, if the image size has changed, you must edit the
appropriate HTML documents and upload those, too.
In my opinion, graphics should be used as a last resort. A company’s style can be made
apparent by the use of a corporate logo and other imagery rather than by the use of a
font. Also, never, ever render body copy as an image. There are many sites out there with
body copy rendered as images, and quite frankly, every one of them makes me want to
scream. Such sites are often full of typos (perhaps because amending them requires the
entire graphic to be reworked, re-exported, and uploaded again), cannot be printed at
quality, and cannot be copied to a text editor. Some suggest this means the site’s text is
“secure.” But this goes against one of the fundamental benefits of the Web: that people
can share information, and that it can be easily copied and sent on to others. Sure, this
presents copyright implications, but everything online is subject to copyright anyway. Also,
plenty of sites commit the cardinal sin of rendering things like contact details as agraphic—I’m sure their customers very much appreciate having to type such things out by
hand rather than just being able to copy them into their digital address books.
of creating online type. It’s common to use graphics (mostly GIFs, but sometimes
Flash, due to its vector-based, scalable nature) for text. If you have to follow a corporate
design style under pain of death, the ability to use graphics can be a lifesaver—after all,
most browsers happily render images, and they can be marked up within heading elements,
so you can control things like margins via CSS and also retain the structural
integrity of your document.
However, graphical text has its share of problems:
Some browsers do not enable you to resize graphical text in a browser.
Because the Web is low-resolution, when a page is printed out, graphical text looks
pixilated and of poor quality.
Although GIF-based text tends to be small in terms of file size, it’s still larger than
HTML-based text.
People using alternate browsers, such as screen readers, cannot “see” graphical text
(although you can use the alt attribute to compensate).
Graphical text cannot be copied and pasted.
Graphical text cannot be read by search engines.
Graphical text is a pain to update. To change a word, you must rework the original
image, export and upload it, and, if the image size has changed, you must edit the
appropriate HTML documents and upload those, too.
In my opinion, graphics should be used as a last resort. A company’s style can be made
apparent by the use of a corporate logo and other imagery rather than by the use of a
font. Also, never, ever render body copy as an image. There are many sites out there with
body copy rendered as images, and quite frankly, every one of them makes me want to
scream. Such sites are often full of typos (perhaps because amending them requires the
entire graphic to be reworked, re-exported, and uploaded again), cannot be printed at
quality, and cannot be copied to a text editor. Some suggest this means the site’s text is
“secure.” But this goes against one of the fundamental benefits of the Web: that people
can share information, and that it can be easily copied and sent on to others. Sure, this
presents copyright implications, but everything online is subject to copyright anyway. Also,
plenty of sites commit the cardinal sin of rendering things like contact details as agraphic—I’m sure their customers very much appreciate having to type such things out by
hand rather than just being able to copy them into their digital address books.
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