Tag: CSS typography

The New New Typography

In the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, there was a movement known as the New Typography. It was a movement that rejected traditional type set in symmetrical columns and instead treated the printer’s block as a blank canvas to be explored in its entirety. The calling card of the movement was type arranged in harmonious and beautiful asymmetric compositions. In the past two years, there has been another slow-breaking wave of typographical exploration. The printer’s block is now HTML, and CSS and JavaScript are fast becoming the new tools of the typographer – not just for the web but for ebooks and for print, and not just for printed books, but for all printed material.

Browser as typesetting machine

The change of the book’s basic carrier medium from paper to HTML (the stuff web pages are made of) has meant many changes to what we might still call typesetting. Kindle and other e-ink devices actually move ink on a display screen to form words, sentences and paragraphs. The moveable type of Gutenberg’s time has become real time – in a very real sense, each book is typeset as we read it. Content is dynamically re-flowed for each device, depending on display dimensions and individualised settings to aid readability. Moving type in ‘read time’ marks a significant paradigm shift from moveable type systems, including digital moveable type manipulated by desktop publishing software, to flowable typesetting. We are leaving behind moveable type for flowable type. 

The engine for reflowing a page in real time is something we have seen before. It is the job of the browser. And, since ebooks are webpages, browsers have come to play a central role in digital e-readers. In the case of the iPad, the iBook reader is actually a fully featured browser engine, Webkit, the very same technology behind the Chrome and Safari browsers. Browsers are the typesetting machines for ebooks.

What is interesting here, is that the browser can also reflow content into fixed page formats such as PDF, which means that the browser is becoming the typesetting engine for print. CSS and Javascript are the print design tools of our immediate future and the vast majority of innovations in this area are based on Open Source and Open Standards.

The power of CSS and JavaScript

CSS is the set of rules followed by the browser in placing type, images and other elements on a webpage and styling those elements. Typical rules define where an image is placed in relationship to text, the font used, the font size, background colour of the page, and the maximum width of an image, and so on. While designed originally for the exclusive application to webpages, the CSS Working Group responsible for overseeing the development and direction of CSS, anticipated the intersection of the book and the web some time ago. In the latest drafts of the CSS standards, new additions are almost entirely focused on typography and page control. As a consequence, this area is starting to blossom. In particular, the CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module specification is astonishing for its reframing of flowable text into a fixed page. Cross reference and footnote controls, not needed on the web, are among many book-like structure controls being addressed by CSS. Table of contents creation, figure annotations, page references, page numbers, margin controls, page size, and more, are all included. The definition of these rules precedes their adoption in browsers, however they are being included in browser engines, notably Webkit, at a very fast pace.

Coincidently, there has recently been an explosion in interest in improving browser typography primarily for the better design of websites. Although these advances have not been made with book production in mind, these advances can be inherited by the browser for typesetting both electronic and paper books. Of interest is the sharp rise in the websites offering tips on CSS typography, an associated explosion of the available web fonts, and some very interesting JavaScript libraries.

JavaScript is the programming language of the web and it can be used to create dynamic content or manipulate objects on a webpage in ways CSS cannot, or cannot yet. Of particular interest is kerning.js, inspired by the previously available lettering.js library. These code libraries allow you to change each letter individually in a paragraph or heading and control the spacing between letters (called ‘kerning’). Kerning is essential for printed books, and ebooks, but missing from browsers for a very long time. colorfont.js is another JavaScript library which enables dual toned glyphs, and the amazing typeset.js emulates the sophisticated TeX line spacing algorithms developed by Donald Knuth.

Even the layout of musical notation and guitar tablature (which were never effectively mechanised with Gutenberg’s moveable type and were handwritten into books for many decades after the printing press came into the world) have come into focus with another JavaScript library, VexFlow. With libraries like these, it is apparent that JavaScript, the programming language of the browser, has a future with typography, and that JavaScript is fast becoming the lingua franca for all typesetting.

There is a lot of fuel in these developments and, interestingly, most of it is coming from outside the traditional print and publishing industry. It could be said that these industries, built upon the printing press, have lost sight of their very foundation. Instead, the IT industry is taking hold on a very deep level.

Apple and Google are behind the development of Webkit – the rendering engine behind iBooks, Safari and Chrome – which makes a lot of these typesetting innovations possible. Apple utilises these typographical features not just in its browser, but in the development of its iBook reader – the ebook reader on iPad which is itself based on Webkit. Google also fuels these innovations for many reasons other than the browser – better typography in Google Docs being one of them. We can expect the momentum to build and it is possible to say with some confidence that the browser, together with CSS and JavaScript, is to become the most important typesetting engine of our time as it is fast becoming the typesetting mechanism for digital and paper books and the web.

Ease and efficiencies

The implications of this succession by the browser are enormous and possibly not yet fully realised. At publishing industry conferences and other book-focused forums, the attention has largely been on the ebook’s affect on distribution, and on e-readers and the demise of the so-called bricks-and-mortar book stores. The biggest effects, however, are elsewhere, ‘bubbling under’ in the recasting of the browser as a typesetting engine, and with it the slow realisation that the technical ecosystem surrounding book production can be replaced by tools for producing webpages.

We are beginning to turn our attention to the tools for making webpages, to make books, and this, it turns out, is much easier than with desktop word processing and publishing software. Additionally due to recent developments, all of this, as it turns out, can also be used to design print (more on in-browser print production in a future post). Book production once again is becoming faster and cheaper and is on its way to achieving another leap of magical efficiency.

The future of book production right now is exploding all around us. These pieces of the puzzle are coming together and coming together fast. We can almost watch in real time as the necessary mechanics get filled in by new release candidates of major browsers and searching online for ‘out of the blue’ small innovations such as JavaScript typography controls. It is getting easier and easier to make books in the browser and consequently there has never been a time when it has been this easy to make books of all kinds.

Ease of production is where it all started for Gutenberg and it is starting again for us. If you believe Gutenberg’s efficiencies changed society forever, then what affect will the new-new typesetting engines have? It’s a giddy question. Making books in the browser will have an enormous impact on society as a whole, and just like the printing press, it will not revolutionise the old order, but create a new one.

Originally published on O’Reilly website, 18 Oct 2012 http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/the-new-new-typography.html

CSS is the new typography

The new layout language for the book is HTML. It has never been easier to make web content using HTML, hence it has never been easier to make a book.

Generally speaking, HTML is frowned upon as a source file format for books because it is seen as worst practice. Best practices require complicated file formats like “docbook” or, worse, Latex. These file formats have been designed to contain and describe content so that beautiful books can be made. Unfortunately, the process of creating docbook and Latex is extremely complicated. Getting a new user to work with either of these formats is quite a process. On the other hand, WYSWYG editors which produce HTML work very much like simple text editors. It is trivial to create HTML with a WYSIWYG editor or similar tool and it can be done online.

HTML is a very established, very well used, and very well distributed format. There are already an enormous number of people using HTML, and an enormous amount of content already stored in HTML. That content and those people are networked, and HTML has a rich legacy of tools that enable transformations into other formats. HTML is the new source format for books.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the syntax that controls the look and feel of HTML. E-readers and web-browsers can read this syntax and present the content accordingly. Book production platforms such as Booktype enable the customisation of CSS for ebook output, but, more interestingly Booktype also enables CSS to control the look and feel of paper books. Designing in this way takes some thought since it is usually disorientating for book designers to ‘design in code’ and it is equally disorientating for web designers to use code to design material products.

The W3C CSS Working Group1 (responsible for overseeing the standard) anticipated the intersection of the book and the web some time ago. In the latest drafts of the CSS standard, new additions are almost entirely focused on typography2 . As a consequence of this emphasis, this area is starting to blossom. There has also recently been a sharp rise in the websites offering tips on CSS typography3 and an explosion of web fonts. (If you are interested in a very good insight about how fonts get to the web please watch the Unbound Book video presentation by Otmar Hoefer, the Director of Font Marketing at Linotype Library4 ).

There are also some very interesting JavaScript libraries available that are trying to make up for what is lacking in CSS typographical controls. Most are based on the well-used and prolifically distributed JQuery JavaScript libraries.

Of particular interest is the kerning.js library which combines the previously available lettering.js library. What these libraries do is to make each glyph (letter/number) into its own element, each of which can then be transformed by CSS-like rules. In plain speak, these code libraries allow you to change each letter individually in a paragraph or heading etc.

There are some nice demonstrations online about why this is interesting, of which the most interesting demo can be found at kern.js. Try visiting that page, double click the big blue circle, then click on and drag the letters individually.

If you then click ‘Finish Editing,’ you will get the CSS controls necessary to implement this effect (if you had kerning.js linked from your page).

There is also another interesting typographical library called colorfont which enables dual toned glyphs.

It is a pretty good trick they used to achieve this. Essentially they created two fonts from the same master font, each displaying just partial glyphs. When overlayed, they display the full glyph. Hence each ‘layer’ can be targeted with a different color.

With libraries like this, it is apparent that JavaScript has a future with web typography but maybe it doesn’t stop at that. These kind of tricks can also be implemented with ebooks and with more and more book designers entering the world of ebook design, I am sure we will see a growing need for more of these libraries.

Good nuanced control over font rendering is good enough at the moment and getting better quickly. However, many e-readers and all web-browsers do not support all of the CSS controls and most ebook readers do not currently support JavaScript. This will change in time, especially since ebooks are becoming a revenue stream for Apple, and Apple (together with Google) is behind the development of webkit – the rendering engine behind iBooks, Safari and Chrome. Good support of CSS typographical controls is on its way and we can expect more web designers to start designing books, and to see more book designers learning code.

What is dismaying, however, is the current trend of vendors like Apple to use non-standard CSS controls to layout the books. Baldur Bjarnasons has written some very good blog posts about this. The strategy by Apple is to make any book authored by the iBook Author software only work (or work well) when viewed with the iPad. I do not really understand this strategy – yes it is the typical platform / sales channel lock-in that Apple is known to perpetuate. However, it means that content creator content has limited distribution because of this. Apple might wave this away by saying that it is ‘innovating,’ but innovation like this cannot be seen without a degree of skepticism about the intended goals.

Nevertheless, it is possible to say with some confidence that CSS and JavaScript will come to be seen as an important development in the history of typography. Just as Gutenberg “was concerned only to imitate the book of his day – which was handwritten”5 but unintentionally gave birth to new aesthetics, we can imagine the new CSS typography to have similar consequences.

  1. http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/members.en.php3^
  2. http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/^
  3. http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/advanced-css-text-effects-web-typography-tips/^
  4. http://vimeo.com/24415178^
  5. Jan Tschichold, The New Typography, University of California Press, 2006, pg 15^