

Flash completely dominates CSS/HTML/JS for rendering text accurately - ownedthx
http://www.ownedthx.com/blog/2009/04/27/flash-completely-dominates-csshtmljs-for-rendering-text-accurately/

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mr_justin
You're not honestly suggesting that developers start using flash to render
their body content, are you?

Besides the copy/paste argument that people have already mentioned (yes, I
know there is a "solution"). It's also inaccessible, takes longer to render
and relies on a 3rd party product to render your website how you intended.

I know you'll probably say "give search engines and accessible-concerned folks
a text version", but who honestly wants to maintain two different sets of code
for ALL body content? And all just so the text looks a little better? Why not
just tell everybody to use Safari/Mac?

~~~
briansmith
Adobe has done a lot of work to make Flash "accessible," if the artist is
willing to put some effort into it. And, once you make it "accessible," search
engines (at least Google) will be able to index it.

Safari/Mac (really, _any_ web browser) is a horrible for typesetting.

If you need a whole document to be predictable typeset, please give me a PDF.
If you don't need it to be typeset perfectly, please give me HTML.

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lisper
> Flash completely dominates CSS/HTML/JS for rendering text accurately

Except that the resulting rendering is an image so you can't copy and paste. I
suppose some content providers will consider that a feature, but as a user it
seems like a serious bug to me.

~~~
ownedthx
Actually that's no problem...

The SWF in the article were two snapshots that I overlayed, one from Flash,
one from Word, so it has no interactivity with the curser.

Truth is, it's entirely possible to enable text selection, if that were a real
demo of the text engine.

~~~
jonah
May I ask why you chose Word as your comparison? It's not known as the paragon
of typeography. :(

~~~
jonah
Eek, that'd be "typography".

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gcv
Three reasons to dislike Flash text. First, it does not look native. I have
certain anti-aliasing settings, for example, and Flash text looks totally
different. Second, copy-paste, as others have pointed out, is a problem ---
yes, it can be done, but enough apps out there fail to enable it properly, so
it does not really work. Third, if I have browser plugins which operate on
text, they break.

~~~
allstabby
> First, it does not look native

I don't think this point stands, or at least it doesn't in the way you think
it does.

Flash has two text rendering modes: native, and embedded. Native uses the
system API and follows your system options, like when deciding on how to
antialias. Embedded uses the embedded fonts with the antialiasing method the
developer chooses. Many developers pick the latter because they want to know
exactly how text will work on all platforms.

It's up to the developer to select which method to use. And the new
flash.text.engine.* API make both a lot more powerful.

> Second, copy-paste, as others have pointed out, is a problem (...) enough
> apps out there fail to enable it properly

Like the first one, this becomes a developer choice, not a platform problem.
It's not that "it can be done", it's that it's easy. People who don't do it,
don't do it because it's the option they've picked, not because it's difficult
or anything.

Your third point totally stands as having a separate DOM kills the user's
control over the content and its form. But point 1 and 2 are due to conscious
developer decisions and not the technology.

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ori_b
PNG dominates CSS/HTML/JS for rendering text accurately too.

I'd prefer something usable. Something that matches the rest of my apps, and
something that used the font sizes and types that I specified (I set a minimum
font size so I can read the test, for example). This doesn't do that.

~~~
mynameishere
Paper is better still...

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jdowdell
Glad you like it. The new Text Layout Framework does a whole lot more too...
it brings the classic Adobe digital-text expertise right into 98% of the
world's current browsers.

Veronique Brossier has a good intro to it all:
<http://www.insideria.com/2009/03/flash-text-engine.html>

More examples & info: <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/textlayout/>

jd/adobe

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Sephr
CSS/HTML/JS can render fonts perfectly if you use <canvas/>. The copy/paste
problem can be solved using the HTML5 drag and drop API. (copy=drag,
paste=drop)

To make sure you have the exact font, you may want to include the font file
with @font in CSS.

~~~
ownedthx
As soon as every major browser supports it, count me in :)

(and as soon as a good majority of folks are actually using those browser
versions!)

~~~
briansmith
Internet Explorer has supported @font-face for over 11 years. You can embed
SVG into the other browsers and/or use Canvas.

~~~
allstabby
So I can use one of two different "standard" technologies, plus a proprietary
technology, to avoid using a single proprietary technology.

I'm not sure where's the advantage.

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Hexstream
So I'm supposed to be excited at the prospect of ditching open web standards
in favor of embedding proprietary Word into proprietary Flash for minor
aesthetic enhancements?

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axod
Moot. You can't even select/copy/paste it. Spiders can't crawl it. Users can't
resize it so they can read it properly.

~~~
ownedthx
Gah. Again, as I posted up above, text selection is possible. going to update
the post to indicate that...

~~~
trapper
So there is no difference from "native" browser text?

That's rubbish. You can't even select flash text + native text in the same
selection. It's completely broken.

Also, flash bugs are platform specific. Like printing issues on firefox in
linux, z-index issues on some browsers etc etc.

None of this happens with native text.

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vaksel
Here is what I always wondered about...we are now on Flash 10...why hasn't
Adobe figured out a way to make Flash more native to the main browsers out
there? How hard is it really for them to add the right click options that
everyone in the world relies on?

Seriously a few lines of code(yeah exaggeration I know), is keeping them from
pretty much domineering the interweb design.

~~~
jdowdell
We're asking the browser vendors to expose their right-click events to
plugins, to provide an API to opening up in a new tab, to open up their cookie
preferences so that plugins can integrate user choice, etc.

There's no need to reflexively push back against Flash. You can learn it.
You're not left out. You can open up.

jd/adobe

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thristian
Wait, what? You're claming that Flash renders text accurately by comparing it
to _Word_? If we're going to create a new typesetting system, can't we at
least compare it to existing typesetting systems that have had some
professional design input? I hesitate to drag out TeX, but come on - Adobe
InDesign, Quark Xpress, even Mac OS X's built-in CoreText/ATSUI rendering
probably pays more attention to text layout and spacing than Word does.

I know Firefox's rendering engine put some effort into supporting the
underlying platform's high-quality text-layout engine (for instance, Firefox
will often use the 'fi' ligature if it's available), and this will only get
better with time - unlike Flash, which will now have to maintain their exact
layout system forever to maintain backwards compatibility.

~~~
jonah
I'd LOVE to see browsers support typographically correct hyphenation, it'd
make narrow columns of text look sooo much better.

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ivankirigin
I've seen uneven kerning in a lot of flash apps.

~~~
jrbedard
This problems occurs mostly on Mac OS X, with dynamic text fields (text input,
when the font is not embedded) :
[http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=f0...](http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=f01edf45)

~~~
ownedthx
Ah, ok. That's what I was hoping. As a mac user myself, I can confirm that
flash.text.engine has excellent, perhaps perfect kerning.

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teilo
This approach for text rendering should really only be used if there were some
sort of graceful failover whereby another browser, lacking flash, would
receive the text rendered as standard HTML. It would be foolish to use it
otherwise.

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ZeroGravitas
There's absolutely no need for that trolling headline. What would have been
wrong with "Flash enables perfect replication of Word's layout engine online"?
Truthful and probably more interesting.

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quoderat
The Flash doesn't work on that page for me, and it works on every other page
I've been to this month.

Why I don't like Flash.

