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…for when you lose the obscure address.

Dash It All

From The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst,

5.2.1 Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens - to set off phrases.

Background

I'm re-reading The Elements of Typographic Style for the third time. Every time I learn new things based on what I have been working on in-between readings. This time the section on Dashes, Slashes and Dots really caught my eye, since I've been trying to learn how to more appropriately use these analphabetic symbols. Here's what Bringhurst has to say about a bad habit that I'd picked up somewhere:

The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed by many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

And here is what he recommends instead:

Used a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side.

With that advice in mind, here are a variety of HTML experiments:

em dash, no space

some text—some more text

en dash, non-breaking space

some text – some more text

hyphen, non-breaking space

some text - some more text

en dash, thinspace

some text – some more text

en dash, en space

some text – some more text

en dash, em space

some text – some more text

hyphen, thinspace

some text - some more text

Note: It shouldn't be a big surprise that Internet Explorer doesn't support thin space or en space, instead inserting what appears to be an em space.

No Rest For The Wicked -- an online comic

I haven't read enough of the comic to give an endorsement yet, but thought I'd blog this for the typography, and the interesting sentence structure navigation, something I've experimented with but not yet had success. In this case it comes off as almost a "cloud", which were trendy for like 2 days, but I never really bought as a navigation tool. Just let me sort the damn tags by frequency. Back to the sentence structure nav – I like the concept of integrating the navigation into the contents of the site. I'm starting to have my doubts as to whether people even use navigation (outside applications), since searching is so much more efficient. If it is true that people don't use navigation as much as search, then putting the navigation in with the content might catch a visitor with their brain actually turned on, not just in scan mode. Or it might even catch them scanning, a process during which normal nagivation bars may be ignored. Anyway, Something to be experimented with on personal sites, not professional work.

SabrinaJeffries.com Redesign Is Live

Here's what I've been working on in my free time for the last 6 months (ok, so maybe only 3 count since I took most of June, July and August off): www.sabrinajeffries.com

Back in the spring it took me several collages and 4 mockups, each evolving from the last until I scrapped them and just did something different for the last, to finally nail the design.

Beyond the design challenge this project has several interesting aspects to it. The Information Architecture had crept out of control on the last site. It needed to be stripped back to promoting essential information, and tucking the extensive peripheral content aside where it can be found by those who want it. With all that content just about every page utilizes all three columns in the design. I had to establish guidelines for what type of content went in each column. This is also the highest profile client that I've worked for so far. Her books regularly make the New York Times Bestseller list, and she is involved in one way or another in 8 releases next year.

It's been an exciting challenge, taking on such a large site single-handedly, but the heavy HTML production in September was rather grueling (all my own fault for slacking off all summer). I'm looking forward to not getting on the computer after work, and when I've recouped a bit starting some new projects. Next up is an online book trade in Ruby on Rails, along with a redesign of this site.

Scratching Post

Photos on Flickr: Fritz Attacking the Scratching Post

I made the cats a couple pieces of scratching furniture a couple months ago. One is a simple "L" shaped peice (like a couch with no arms or legs) that protects the carpet that they'd been scratching on the step up to the office. They don't use it that often, but they've stopped scratching the carpet; mission accomplished. The other is this upright post that I built because I was on a roll. It's a piece of scrap 4x6 wrapped in carpet, the seems protected with extra-thick leather. It's all held together with sheetrock screws.

For about a month the cats wouldn't touch the thing. I'd clearly put too much effort into it, and they wanted to see me suffer. Recently we decided to push the TV hutch all the way against the wall where it belongs (original furniture floorplan) freeing up more space between the living room and cat dining room. It also let us open up the left "wing" of the hutch and put the scratching post under it. The cats love it now. The Fritz has become very territorial, attacking the Milton whenever he goes to use it. Very entertaining.