Web Typography: sIFR

In general, I really dislike Flash when building websites. But one bit of Flash technology that I use somewhat regularly is sIFR (which, if you’re curious, stands for Scalable Inman Flash Replacement).

What is sIFR? Basically it’s code that replaces plain HTML text on a web page with a small Flash movie that displays the text in any typeface you want. It works on any major browser with the Flash plug-in (which is nearly all web users) and sIFR degrades gracefully for the few that don’t, displaying the plain HTML text instead of the Flash text.

sIFR has been a great way for me to add style and personality to an otherwise all-HTML-text website. For sites I’ve built on a CMS — like barbarapeavey.com, craigrousseau.com and kieranchapmandesign.com — sIFR takes the site-owner-generated page titles and displays them in the selected typeface. This is such a timesaver over having to create or edit title images each time a change is made.

Alas, sIFR isn’t perfect: It’s use is pretty much limited to titles and subtitles; using it for body text would slow things down too much. Already it does slow down page load times a bit, as the page needs to first load before the Flash displays the title text. Also, while I’ve implemented it a number of times, it’s still not the easiest technology to get running correctly on a site. Besides setting up the script and styles, there’s often quirks and tweaking to get text to display correctly.

Until we’re given proper control over type on the web — perhaps TypeKit will be the answer? — sIFR has been a very good stopgap solution. For more information, as well as downloads, examples and documentation, check out sIFR Documentation & FAQ.