FontStack and iPhone fonts

[badcat]

Hi folks - just a heads up per my tweet. http://twitter.com/kelter/status/5809017831

BP appears to have an issue with italics like <em> and <dfn> do not
correctly becoming italicized on iPhone MobileSafari. The font stack
inclusion of Helvetica Neue seems to be the culprit. I'm guessing
MobileSafari's lack of Helvetica Neue disallows "faking" italics.

Here's a list of iPhone fonts...
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2007/07/iphone-osx-fonts

(See note: Helvetica Neue is not included on iPhone, but if specified,
MobileSafari will substitute Helvetica. (Also, even on Mac OS X, the
Condensed Bold and Condensed Black weights of Helvetica Neue do not
have italics.)

and another discussion re: iPhone.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1420455/font-families-on-the-iphone

Not sure, but this may also be an issue with Android, Palm and WinMo.

What's a good solution?

[Christian Montoya]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:32 AM, badcat <kelt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks - just a heads up per my tweet. http://twitter.com/kelter/status/5809017831

...

> and another discussion re: iPhone.
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1420455/font-families-on-the-iphone
>
> Not sure, but this may also be an issue with Android, Palm and WinMo.
>
> What's a good solution?

A solution would be to build a port of Blueprint for mobile devices.
This would probably be best tackled by someone with more experience in
the mobile dev world. Blueprint itself, while very lightweight for the
desktop world, would be too bloated for mobile devices. Even the
iPhone and other large-display cellphones would not benefit much from
all the CSS Blueprint has. I'd love to see ports that cover the
different environments, I.E. Mobile Safari, Opera Mini, Fennec, etc.


--
--
Christian Montoya
mappdev.com :: christianmontoya.net

[badcat]

Wow.. OK. I'd guessed just making a change to the font stack order
would be simpler than porting BP to be Mobile specific.

On Nov 19, 7:15 am, Christian Montoya <siro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > What's a good solution?
>
> A solution would be to build a port of Blueprint for mobile devices.
> This would probably be best tackled by someone with more experience in
> the mobile dev world. Blueprint itself, while very lightweight for the
> desktop world, would be too bloated for mobile devices. Even the
> iPhone and other large-display cellphones would not benefit much from
> all the CSS Blueprint has. I'd love to see ports that cover the
> different environments, I.E. Mobile Safari, Opera Mini, Fennec, etc.
> --

> Christian Montoya
> mappdev.com :: christianmontoya.net

[Christian Montoya]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 10:35 AM, badcat <kelt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow.. OK. I'd guessed just making a change to the font stack order
> would be simpler than porting BP to be Mobile specific.

Making a change to the font stack order would be a bad move for
desktop computers and would indicate that I think Blueprint should be
used stock on mobile devices, which I do not. It would be much better
to port or at least cut out all the stuff mobile devices don't need.
After all, if you have to serve a specific stylesheet with a media
query for iPhone, you definitely don't need things like ie.css or
print.css.

--

[badcat]

Not sure I agree with the point you mention regarding it being a bad
move for desktop computers as Hel Neue is not even a core font for
most OSs. While I'm not sure about the other mobile devices, iPhone
does not require something like "media=handheld". The issue is that I
would think most would agree that the default behavior should be to
italicize <em> almost as a default, yet the base stack calls a font
which iPhone has an issue with. Understanding the iPhone continues to
gain marketshare, it seemed a good move to consider a change to the
stack. That's all.

It's not obviously, not an issue to override BP, I was only pointing
out something that seemed very basic and could possibly have a quick
solution.