The Trouble with Type
The rumors of global web improvement include a number of promising upgrades between; the eventual arrival of HTML 5 (with all of it's bells and whistles), jQuery's continual growth into cross platform interaction, and the integration of loading custom fonts into the type on your pages. The world of web will soon become a very different 'type' of design experiment.
The trouble is that some of the limitations found within the web are, in some ways, its greatest strength. And while I have spent as many occasions shaking my fist at the screen in frustration, I also know that the most backward restrictions of using Hypertext create an - at least somewhat consistent environment for the user. Keep it simple - keep it readable - get to the point. These are the most markedly different aspects of browsing online versus any other media source.
The online landscape is changing to become a more engaging, animated, socially networked arena and it is in the control of the web designers how to balance between the flashy shiny advertising space that it is moving to and the succinct raw information source that underlies it. I can't wait to get my hands on all the new toys as much as the next guy, but I do wonder which direction the trend will go.
We at VisionFriendly.com have been designing websites for nearly 12 years now and it is always interesting to look back at how drastically far things have come and wonder where they will be in another 10.
