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When it comes to web design, most people assume that this discipline is all about neat graphics and pixel-pushing, but they truly forget that more then 90% of the information on the web is written language and thus Typography. One problem we web designers faced for the last decade, is that we only can refer to a handful of web save fonts (fonts pre-installed on our OS) such as: Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Times, Courier New and Courier – plus a few more options that work cross-platform. In short, we have been limited in our creative impulse to provide the end-user with nicer looking fonts for far too long.

Back in 1998, when The CSS2 specification was released, the CSS rule @font-face was introduced to make it easier for us to use none web save fonts. The browser would simply download the font from the server – if its not installed on the clients computer – and embed it on the website. This was removed in the CSS2.1 specification because it literally enabled illegal downloading of licensed fonts, which of course is not in the very best of interest of the font creators.

Microsoft started supporting font embedding through the proprietary Embedded OpenType (.eot) standard since version 4.0, as an attempt to protect licensed fonts from illegal downloading. However Internet Explorer only supports  .eot file format for embedding fonts which again gives us web designers more work to take care of. If you want your none web save font to be displayed on IE browsers, then you will need to convert it first to an .eot file format. *sigh

Generally speaking: Modern browsers support @font-face embedding and this is clearly on the rise! Tho I will mention shortly the methods we web designers still use as work-around until @font-face is widely implemented:

1. Font fallback – a common practice, simply choose a ‘look-a-like’ font
2. Image replacement – overlaying your text with an image containing the text content in the font of your choice.
3. sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) – is a flash based alternative. tho its slow and you need to have flash and javascript enabled.
4. Cufon – uses vml for ie browser and html5 canvas for modern browsers. Tho it embeds the fonts, thus violates the copyrights.

These methods are all still in use and well know techniques and yet just alternatives! But lets move on, I want to show you how the CSS declaration of the @font-face looks like:

@font-face {
  font-family: "Your typefacename";
  src: url("type/filename.eot"); //IE
  src: local("☺"), //IE hack not to choke and die
  url("type/filename.woff") format("woff"),
  url("type/filename.otf") format("opentype"),
  url("type/filename.svg#filename") format("svg");
}

Maybe you are wondering why this code looks a little bulky, eh ? Well its because we want to cover all browsers to display our acquired font and to avoid gaps! And as you remember from above, IE for example only supports .eot (this will change with IE9). All other modern browsers support the use of .ttf (trueType font) and .oft(openType font) file format, as well the .svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) and .woff (Web Open Font Format).

Conclusion

I really think that the future belongs to @font-face, its plain, simple & pure CSS code, plus we are not dependent on javascript or flash, which keeps the implementation time in check and saves us from other headaches.

I tried to sign up for Linkarena a German social bookmarking site and encountered the following problems. In fact 2 of 4 fields came up with very creative error messages:

1. User name: green -> not taken. great.

2. Email address: “steiss@gmail.com is not a valid email address…”
WHAT??? I’m using it for years now and I have no clue what your tool dislikes about my email address.

3. Password: It’s secure. great.

4. Repeat your Password: “It’s not a valid email address”
Why am I not surprised?

Dear Linkarena,
I really like your form. It’s easy, short, plain. A great form when you look at it. I like the functionalities, like checking if the User name is still available and so on. This might not happen all the time, but still it seems to happen. So please make my life easier and your form more effective by making it work.

… just write your specification right on it! It might catch the eye too…

Just found this banner advertisement on http://www.cityweekend.com.cn.

Really cute with the little hearts and the purple color. Now let´s think about the potential target group. Male? Nah! That´s obviously for women only. Age: Thats tricky, but most likely teenagers or housewives above 50. At least thats what I´d say about the foreigner part, which also answers the Profession question.

But luckily we get the exact target group description right on the banner:
designed for the sophisticated, over 25 Chinese and foreign professional (who feels passionate about purple and hearts, wait purple hearts… nope I can´t make a political correct joke with that)

By the way “the first 20.000 members receive free VIP membership for one year”. Check www.yuanlaishini88.com if you think you fit the target group.

If their marketing person has a Google alert for “yuanlaishini88″ we might soon get enlightened, because I´m still struggling with the sophisticated part.

I just stumbled upon this great study by Forum One Networks. One of their projects is the Online Community Research Network. Why didn’t I find that earlier? The study was made in October 2007… Better late than never. They also provide other interesting stuff and you can participate in their studies, which at the end of the day will be great for everybody.

Some findings they point out on page one:
- Respondents generally valued non-fiduciary dimensions of value, like loyalty over direct revenue.
- The most effective revenue generating techniques were advertising and charging for community subscription.
- A member-first attitude is needed when considering the addition of fee-based or revenue-generating services. The best way to find out what your members do or don’t want ? Ask them.

Interesting facts to me while I was reading the study were:
- More then 50% don’t get directly attributable revenue from their communities.
- Community activities like content sharing and social networks got more popular. Blogs, general discussion groups, content sharing and product support forums are the most popular.
- Highly valuable dimensions for the organizations are: member engagement, member loyalty, member satisfaction and influencer activity. This is much more customer centered than call avoidance which was rated not valuable.
- communities charge for a lot of different and specific stuff. For example: Contact members, assess to experts, Storage ad-free browsing, custom domain, enhanced game play, enhanced support, member visibility, networking, private groups, custom platforms, enhanced profiles, premium articles, custom templates, private messages, there’s no freed content on the site, premium documentation, developer version software. I’m wondering for what else you could charge: more detailed information, earlier access to information, unique Profile extensions or effects, …
- best targeted Advertising and Subscriptions but the most common ways to generate revenue from an online community. Thought leadership, lead generation, customer retention, brand loyalty are top indirect revenue sources. The study provides a list with websites that have interesting revenue approaches, which show that Advertising and Subscription generally work for every community but you need to find a specific solution that depends on your community.

Overall the best advice is to understand your community, what value do they find in interacting. Ask them what they want/ need. Which means that you add features that are valuable for the members and compliment the core features. Don’t abuse it, try advertisement or sponsorship that is that well targeted that it actually adds some value. If you want to charge for features, add something where your members think its actually worth paying for. Try to mix the parts of the different revenue models so you always use the one that suites you community the best.

I just found Rachel Happe’s Blog www.thesocialorganization.com – how social media is changing communication and organizations. This is not only a very interesting topic, she also provides us with brilliant thoughts, lists, question an further information.

Social Media is one of the most popular buzzwords these days. So how do you put metrics on a blurry phrase?

Rachel formulated a couple of question to understand what social media provides and what the value we want to meassure would be:

- What is the value of having a better conversation?
- What is the value of meeting someone?
- What is the value of getting more accurate information faster?
- What is the value of being able to drive consensus around an idea faster?
- What is the value of building trust?
- What is the opportunity cost of not innovating?

And how can we measure that? Just try to answer these question for yourself, your social media life…

Can you measure the value of a conversation and if you do, don’t you forget a lot of aspects that these numbers won’t show and therefore you miss more information then you gain? Not measuring at all can’t be a solution but always be aware of the fact that a lot of information especially regarding social media can’t be measured but is at least as important.

Still companies need some numbers as a basis to decide if things work, if they improve, if they are worth the investment. So if you are looking for numbers to put some sort of handle on these question try Rachel’s list. They might not make sense for everybody in every case, but it’s a great starting point to decide where to start and what you need in your special case. So go to the list, answer the questions and get some inspiration.