sIFR 3 Beta Is Here
December 21st, 2006
Just in time for the holidays, the Dutch Wolf has posted the first official beta of the brand new version of sIFR! sIFR 3 is chock full of great new features that are sure to bring out your inner typography genius, and because Flash is now owned by Adobe, we’ve even created an unimaginative new icon for it! :)
Some highlights of sIFR 3 include:
- Much easier implementation with no need for font tuning anymore.
- Constant font sizing with no more fuzzy logic used to determine actual type size.
- Smoother anti-aliasing and better readability via Flash 8/9′s Saffron rendering engine.
- Ability to use Flash’s text effects such as shadowing.
- sIFR now renders on-demand instead of after everything else has loaded, making for a much quicker viewing experience.
- … and a whole lot more.
So head on over to the Dutch Wolf’s place and check out the new beta for yourself. The quicker we can all help squash any remaining bugs, the quicker an official sIFR 3.0 implementation can be released.
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HAH – I love the icon (the pun therein, of course).
A new icon, now there’s a surprise!
That is awesome! Nice work on the icon! *cough* bs *cough*
Looking forward to giving this a try.
Page doesn’t load… great logo. :P
Nice update – on demand render is great.
I actually think they new Adobe icons will be very functional once we get use to them.
So…what’s the Spanish version of sIFR going to be called?
Great news! Too bad novemberborn is down … maybe he got dugg/slashdotted?
I’m excited about this release of sIFR and can’t wait to use it in some upcoming projects.
I’m really digging the icon too… in that sarcastic sort of way.
Very funny!
That’s a great new logo, it must’ve taken hours to come up with! :)
Bramus!: What, mention on this site wasn’t enough?
Ah, I didn’t think was real the first time. Guess it is… good job.
Love the icon!
novemberborn is running now. The icon looks professional :)
sIFR has changed the way I think about type on the web – no joke. I’ll be updating my sites for sIFR 3 soon.
I’m glad you’ve broken compatibility with Flash 7 – it’s good to let go. Flash 8 has 90% penetration as of September, and that number is only rising.
Sweet icon too. Now you just need to release a few similarly-featured applications with the same style icons that only have subtle variations in their color hue. Now that would be a badass branding scheme.
Yups, the icon is really wicked!. As for the sIFR, how cool it would be if it supports the gradient etc. styles too! :)
Hey that’s so nice news. I’ve waiting for it eagering.
And I like the logo, but it is obviously inspired by PS CS3 beta isn’t it? hehe
Bye
Wow..! thats just too kool
I’m assuming Mike’s changed his site to reflect the latest sIFR. In that case, I may have identified a problem – likely on my end. I’m trapped here in a pretty strict IT environment, but the headlines on the /blog/ page are not coming through. They did pre-sFIR 3 last week. I’m on XP Pro/IE 6, and I’ve got the most recent Flash player.
However, they ARE coming through if I go to the post’s page (with comments). I thought it odd that there would be a discrepancy like this. (of course it’s fine on Firefox, which I loaded via my thumb drive).
Here are links to screenshots – if that’s helpful.
http://www.acflynn.com/images/bloghome.gif
http://www.acflynn.com/images/blogpost.gif
LOVE the sIFR, though!
Actually Mike is still using 2.0.1. When you say “not coming through”, do you see plain text for the headlines or is the Flash movie not being loaded?
The headlines are not rendering in Flash, nor is the plain text visible. Where normally the Agency font Mike uses appears in the headline, with an underline above the date of the post, all I see is the date.
Again, it’s as designed on the individual post page, just missing this on the mikeindustries/blog/ page.
Given that IE6 is still “most popular” (cough, cough) I’m guessing it must be on my side of things, no? But with the latest Flash player installed (multiple reboots since), it’s quite vexing.
If the headlines are gone, Flash was detected, but the movie didn’t properly render.
How does the sIFR 3 demo work for you?
Andrew: It’s definitely not sIFR 3, but I wonder if it’s another Flash element on the page somewhere. For instance, my latest post contains a Flash movie (the mail thing) and that may be causing weirdness for you.
I’ve been following this for a while, and I still strongly feel it should resize when the text on the page is resized. Many people change the font size on their screen – yet the sIFR elements retain their size. All the other accessibility issues pale in comparison to this. There are already ways to detect text resizing via javascript – it isn’t hard to incorporate this into sIFR.
Rommil, correct. It’ll be there. In fact, some of the ground work has already been laid down in Revision 209.
this method is very good,but it is do not support the chinese.
I was wondering if anyone knows of a good tutorial on how to create a sIFR SWF file. I’ve been looking around and can’t find any. The best I could find is at ADOBE here and it’s from 2005.
I tried it and was all happy till I uploaded the SWF file to my server then copied the link and pasted it in my code for my MySpace page. Now all I get is ” Rendered with sIFR 3 ” . The sIFR SWF files I have from FONTSMACK and other places works fine. Is this because it’s the old type of sIFR or did I not creat the sIFR SWF file correctly. I’m on MySpace so can’t use js. I know you all hate it and anyone who uses it is an idiot.. blah blah blah, but that’s the way it is. I think sIFR is the greatest thing but I want to make my own now. Can anyone help point me in the right direction.
http://www.myspace.com/headbangingkitty
I have Flash and IE fails to render any of the pretty headlines in the v2 or v3 demos.
This is because your Flash detection script is nonsense. The user agent string is meaningless and it appears that the IE-specific loop that creates ActiveX objects stops counting at 7.
Don’t feel too bad as I’ve seen a lot of broken Flash sites since I uninstalled Flash and re-installed their latest (v9.) But I thought this thing was supposed to be standards-based. (?)
Hi David, thanks for the compliment, I guess :) There is no “user agent string” which is meaningless, I’m checking very specificly for IE/Win. There is not a loop either, but a well-tested way of detecting Flash using JavaScript. The same technique is used by SWFObject.
Now, of course there could be something about your setup not detected by the code. Just for comparison, could you verify if this SWFObject example works?
I’m not really sure what this has to do with standards.
Flash is being recognized, divs are being replaced, but I’m getting a width and a height of 0. When I open firebug and manually edit these atrributes, I get “Rendered with SIFR 3.0″ instead of the text that was replaced.
Any thoughts?