PHPMyFont :)

XeRoZeN

I thought of a great idea (I never seen it around before) a PHPMyFont where it uses .gif instead of text. I think this may cause a major lag issue for the 56k haha but each sprite is about 8 bytes. How many bytes or so does a single letter take? I already made it it's just I need to know if this would be a lag crisis. I made this script so my clients wouldn't have to download custom fonts that weren't already installed in the OS and it'll be good for those who attempt to copy and paste my news.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by XeRoZeN
I thought of a great idea (I never seen it around before) a PHPMyFont where it uses .gif instead of text. I think this may cause a major lag issue for the 56k haha but each sprite is about 8 bytes. How many bytes or so does a single letter take?

Well... you could make a few and find out (hint: a 1x1-pixel GIF takes 43 bytes) - try PNG as well (a 1x1-pixel PNG takes 85 bytes, but there is more savings at larger sizes). But don't forget HTTP and TCP/IP overhead. (One thing you could do is (in Javascript) have a preloader that requests all the characters of the font, so that they're all available when needed; any decent browser should cache them. People not using Javascript would just request them as they're displayed. It might also be possible to just download a single image containing the entire font, and use some sort of framing in CSS to display the characters you want, but that will bloat out your page probably more than would be saved.

vaaaska

Sounds like a good idea...

But how would people use text zoom? Personally, I would be ecstatic if everybody could read a 9px font like me but it's not ever going to happen...

I could see that being a real nightmare if a person made a liberal use of varying font sizes (I would be one of these people). And text formatting like bold, italic, etc. And line height and character spacing...

When I really need to use a custom font and it needs to be dynamic (like for titles), I just use very rudimentary Flash to make it happen...but that wouldn't work as well for the article itself.

And, what's wrong with cutting and pasting text? It's a huge part of what makes things happen so fast via the net.

But I'm still curious, can we see it in action...please...please... 😃

Mordecai

Way back when, I helped my friend Myke develop a page that had no actual text--everything was images. We worked it out so it took only very basic things--bold, italic, underline, line breaks, etc.

It requires a very nice server, and a fast connection for all. You could do some pretty serious compression if you were very set on using it, but that may look a bit bad.

If you need some help getting this off the ground, I may be of some help.

XeRoZeN

I have no webhost at the moment T_T and I didn't really work much on this lol I just got it to display the sprites and etc. I don't know what else to add because making sprites is a pain in the rear! I dislike the GD Library (I don't know why but I just do ^⁾ and it's because im a crappy windows user and I don't have a clue how to install it on my PC 😛

PyroX

You would kill a sever if you used this on any high traffic site.

Not because of bandwidth but because of file reqeusts.

Instead of the client asking the server:
Give me index.html (which contains 90k in text)

The client would be saying:
Give me index.html (which now contains 900k in text ( image tags ), AND it would be saying:

Give me a.gif
give me b.gif
give me c.gif

You would increase both the file size, and the client ( browser ) would be asking for 37 files ( with no other graphics ) , instead of just one.

So, in summary, you would be making the server work 37X it's previous load, just to display some text.

Not a good idea.

drawmack

Not just that but it is illegal to make a site that is not reable by adaptive browsers and you're discriminating against the handicapped by doing so. Brail, and Text to Speach browsers would not be able to render these pages and therefor you could be sued over it.

PyroX

It's even worse than 37X

You would be looking at nearly 70 file requests per page, rather than 1.

Add in any CSS, design images, logo work, etc, and you have an extremely bloated single page.

If your site gets a couple hits a day or something, you might be ok. But if it actually gets traffic, it would kill your server.

I know this from experience.

One old app I once supported had 100 images it used to draw a map during winter, "road conditions".

As soon as a snow storm would begin, people would start checking the map. The server would start choking after about 30 minutes, and eventually puke all over the farm.

Just way too many file requests for it to keep up.

Course, it was IIS (lol) but still, not a good plan.

move3rd

One of the articles here recomends using GD to create buttons or titles. I am doing so on a site I'm developing at the moment. Is that ilegal? Do Brail, and Text to Speach browsers read alt text?

PyroX

As long as you provide alt text on buttons, you are fine.

Side note:

"this site here" does not always give the best info.

I hope you are caching your buttons and not redrawing them each time someone visits your site ( shudders at the thought of you on a shared host sucking that CPU dry )

drawmack

Yup you're right about the alt text, and that makes the image tags even longer

i.e.

1 byte is transmitted

<img src="getletter.php?a" alt="a" />

37 bytes are transmitted.

now the server has to retrieve the file a.gif which we'll assume is 43 bytes.

You've just transmitted 80 bytes for a single letter.

You mentioned using this on articles. A single page article is usually about 500 words and each word is about 5 characters. So you're looking at
500 5 = 2500 bytes of plain text or 500 5 * 80 = 200,000 bytes of data for the same result.

on a 56k modem the plain text would transmit in about 0.04 seconds to transmit, the images would take about 3.49 seconds to transmit. So on average you're looking at pages taking 87.25 times longer to load. So if a plain text version of your page 0.25 seconds to load the image version would take about 21.81 seconds to load.

Yuck.

move3rd

I'm not caching my images. Do you think it's really nesscesery when used in moderation?

I only use the GD images for page titles . They are normaly no more than 3 words and I am using a small font size. The average image file size is 30kb (1 on each page). Page load times between 0.3 and 1.0 secounds.

PyroX

If it were me, I would not use GD for something as trivial as page titles.

It all depends on the amount of traffic you get.

IF gd regenerates the same image each time you get a visitor, and you get 1,000 visitors, 999 could of been given a cached image. That saves resources on the server.

Again, if you only get 2 or 3 hits a day, who cares.

XeRoZeN

Hmm..its illegal say wha..lol as long as I add a alt="" hmm..each image is 8 bytes and I usually type in about 300 characters 2,400 bytes! And seeing it would be a pain for servers hmm..maybe if we had GD Library to merge a all the sprites together? And it'll be done once..so for all the viewers there getting 1 big image instead of 300 images.

move3rd

Originally posted by PyroX
If it were me, I would not use GD for something as trivial as page titles.

It really makes a differance on small interface type sites to have sharp title's (png). Especialy when your using small fonts.

Though presentation is never as important as content doesnt mean we shouldnt make an effort!

Originally posted by PyroX

IF gd regenerates the same image each time you get a visitor, and you get 1,000 visitors, 999 could of been given a cached image. That saves resources on the server.

Whewn you look at it like that! .... I'm off to figure out how to cach these images!

move3rd

Originally posted by XeRoZeN
Hmm..its illegal say wha..lol

😉

XeRoZeN

Well my idea is good if I get GD to accually merge all of the sprites into 1 image. 🙂 but the problem is telling it when to indent and stuff..I should add a warning then "Not supporting the handicapped or blind" HAHAHA! I'll lose so much customers 😛

Weedpacket

Originally posted by vaaaska
Sounds like a good idea...

I hope this wasn't a reply to my post - if it was then I can't have made my point strongly enough. That's okay, others have already managed it.

vaaaska

Originally posted by Weedpacket
I hope this wasn't a reply to my post - if it was then I can't have made my point strongly enough. That's okay, others have already managed it.

Nooooooooo...it was a response to Xerox' post. I should remember to quote people more often.

How does that song go...

I dream of cherry pies, candy bars,
and real typography on the web.

David Byrne from Nothing But Flowers (and typographic bliss)

Well, I did a little editing there if it's not obvious. Heh...

goldbug

Who says it's illegal?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the US, only government-related pages must adhere to Section 508; In the UK, I believe there is something similar.

However, this is a global network, someone in country a does not really have follow the laws of country b.