Fixing Web Font Padding Issues on Linux/Mac/Android Browsers

Recently I came across an annoying issue with web font (@font-face) in which the text does not appear vertically center within buttons or inputs (see image). Google around, I found that not all web fonts are affected, this defect seem to occur only on Mac/Linux and may vary in different browsers and is commonly referred to as "web font padding issue".

It's interesting enough that although the issue is quite common and has been reported several times but there seem to be no absolute solutions. Most suggested the workaround to set uneven padding to compensate for the shift. I have struggled so much with workarounds for this especially the padding didn't help to correct the alignment across browsers and devices (I preview my app in Chrome/OSX but it runs on iOS Safari and Android browser) so I decided to look into the issue again and thought about typography metrics problems.

Honestly, I know very little about typography and font metrics. I used FontForge (which happens to be easily installed on Ubuntu) to tinker with the troubling font file. After a few hours, I have discovered the problem when I tried to replicate the settings of another good font on the defective one. It was one of my Eureka moments!

Project: In2Ideas HTML5 Website

This is the complete rework of the front page of my (now ex) agency to show case our experiences and expertise. The concept was that the whole site is a mind map which is often associated with brainstorming & ideas generating.

The key feature of the site is the mind-map-like navigation in which you can drag to move in any direction. It works on both desktop and tablet's browsers. Looping animations are made of SVG graphics which were authoring in Flash and then converted to Google Swiffy. The dynamic dash lines were programatically drawn on HTML5 Canvas. To support older browser (IE8+), Flash will be in place of the SVG & Canvas graphics.

My roles: technical researcher, key front-end developer.
Technical highlights: HTML5, CSS3, RequiredJS, jQuery, Google Swiffy, FlashCanvas

Live URL: http://in2ideas.com

More screen shots:

Interaction demo:

HTML5 Wordle Tag Cloud

This is a direct port of my AS3 Wordle Tag Cloud to HTML5. Please read my old blog post for some background.

Some technical notes:

• Thanks to Canvas' RenderingContext2D.measureText(), I can calculate size of the words off browser's stage.
• Initially, I was using Canvas as rendering stage for the tag cloud. However, it demands extra work to make the words interactive. So I decided to use normal block text with CSS3's transform/rotate. The result is texts are searchable and out-of-the-box hyperlinks.
• The position checking process may cause browser hang momentarily if run through all of the words. I have split the process of each word into each RequestAnimationFrame to avoid the script hang.

However, there is still room to improve, for example, enhancing the intersection check and using any angle rotation...

There you go! Check out the live demo and source code.

Google App Engine for static websites

Nowadays, there are many options to host a static website (portfolios, generated weblogs, front-end demos, etc.) for free. One of the best ways is to push your static files to a Github's repo and publish them through Github Page.

A lesser known solution is to make use of Google App Engine (GAE). Actually, GAE is designed for building and publishing high-performance, highly scalable web applications written in Python, Java or the newly-introduced Go language. However, by tinkering with the set up and deployment process, I figured out that it is also great for hosting static website with no server side coding at all. Like Github Page, your static website will be served through http://[your-app].appspot.com or you can customize it with a (sub)domain.

The advantages of GAE over Github Page are: higher static files quota (known in GAE as blobstore, known in Github as repository size); allowed SSL; better performance (since GAE app is hosted with reserved thread and bandwidth); possible to supplement data and dynamic server-side scripting later.

Project: ISS 2012

This is a post-event highlighting microsite for Intεl Sοlμtiοn Sμmm!t 2012. The site is to capture the activities and everything related to event in the forms of videos, photos & other kind of materials. Audience of this microsite are participants of the event and other users of APɅC Intεl Channεl Pοrtal which is a member-only partners relation web site.

Live URL: www.%69%6E%74%65%6C.com/apac/channel/ISS2012/index.html [?]

Technical features:

• jQuery
• Galleria photo gallery (library)
• OSMF's Strobe Media Playback (component)

Obfuscation Reasons