Vine Type 0.99 Coming Soon
Recent visitors to Vine Type may have noticed a slight change in the site. Specifically, the article headings are appearing in a new and exciting manner.
Designers accustomed to the same old fonts are going to be pleased with a new Vine Type feature about to hit the streets. It's called ViPR - Vine Type Inline PNG Replacement.
Simple 13-Step Installation
With ViPR, Vine Type sites will be able to display just about any font in any color against any background, including transparent backgrounds. Sounds complicated, I know, but here are the simple thirteen steps you need to perform after installing the upcoming 0.99 release of Vine Type
- Copy an OpenType or TrueType font to a special folder on the web server
- Add two lines to your vinetype.config file
- I was just kidding. There are only two steps!
The font doesn't need to be installed on the webserver's operating system. The font doesn't even have to be installed on your computer's operating system.
Exceptional User Experience
If that isn't enough to get excited about, there are no browser requirements. No Flash. No Javascript. No Plug-Ins Add-Ins or Third-Party Apps required. Headings are converted to PNG images that can be displayed natively by just about every browser on the planet. And for IE5 that doesn't (normally) display transparent PNGs -- Vine Type automatically feeds additional code to IE5 so that it does support PNG transparency.
All these headings are generated on-the-fly from the article titles defined within Vine Type. No hard drive space is utilized -- the images are generated in the web server's RAM and streamed directly back to your browser.
What's The Hold Up?
I've been communicating with Ray Larabie of Larabie Fonts to bundle a font within Vine Type. Once the details are finalized, I'll be releasing the next version.
What Is That Font, Anyway?
The font appearing on this website, by the way, is Cambria. Check out a couple of the more daring ViPR installations -- Vine Branches is using a font called Two By Four for a drafting-table feel and I Am A Camera sports Concurso Italian.