Orangutangy

Tag: webdesign

  • Chinese language tips for web design

    Update 2010, Oct 26 – New discoveries, much better font reference confidence

    Recently I needed to work with some Chinese and we had tons of trouble trying to figure out which fonts to use and how to specify them in CSS. After a lot of detective work and comparing long font lists we found some basic font choices that should work on both PC and Macs that have Chinese language packs active. The process was PAINFUL…

    After several months, this is coming up again as we define our style guide. I found a new article which describes and provides screen-shots for 5 common mandarin fonts. He lists in order,

    1. 宋体, Song Ti, a serif font very common in site font declaration
    2. 黑体, Hei Ti, a sans-serif. (We picked this one for body text)
    3. 幼圆, You Yuan, a rounded font like comic-sans without the stigma.
    4. 隶书, Li Ti, a brush script.
    5. 微软雅黑, Microsoft Ya Hei a sans-serif, supposedly not fully supported yet designy

    Some [updated] Chinese Website tips:

    1. Specify English fonts first and then the Chinese fonts in your font list. This makes it so English fonts render with your desired fonts then the Chinese fonts pick up the other characters. font-family: futura, arial, Hei, “微软雅黑”, “宋体”, sans-serif;
    2. Standard chinese sans-serifs are: 黑体 (Hei ti), 微软雅黑 (MS Yahei)
    3. The standard chinese serifs is: 宋体 (Song ti)
    4. Set a meta tag to display chinese charset: utf-8. <META HTTP-EQUIV=”content-type” CONTENT=”text/html” charset=”utf-8″>
    5. My final recommendation for a sans-serif font stack is: font-family: arial, 黑体, 微软雅黑, 宋体, sans-serif;

    References:

  • A dream web design class

    I have a question to poll the audience: If you were to create a new Web design intro class, what would you teach? There were plenty of holes in my knowledge left to fill after my first class (still are plenty of them), but what would you propose adding? Here’s my take on an intro web design class. Do you have anything to add/remove? Let’s be brutal!

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  • PHP register new user

    So I’m continuing on my user account management quest. Yesterday and today I added the ability to register as a new user. It’s still very rudimentary- the registration fields are not checked for validity (so more than one user can have the same user name) but I feel great that I’m making progress. Try it out: http://yukikodesign.com/test/testbed/index.php

    Next up, send an email when “forgot password” and add personal account management to change passwords and delete users if you’re an admin.

  • PHP user login test

    A huge step for me in programming- I got a simple user authentication to work through php. It took some stretching and “feeling my way through the dark” but I got something that requires a login and logout and it seems to work. The SQL database stuff was a bit of a fanagle since it veered off from my book but this time I looked around and was able to “upload” my queries instead of typing them out in a command prompt. I’ll work on it a bit more later but it’s sleepy time.

    links:
    My Quick and dirty test
    User: jack
    Pass: toronto

    Book reference: PHP Hacks- Tips & tools for Creating Dynamic Web Sites
    Online Tutorial: Simple Login, Logout, and Session Handling