Here you'll find how to use sIFR on your website. If you are wondering about interacting with the JavaScript, please see Javascript Implementation.
Design your site as normal, and make sure your headlines are styled with CSS. Users who do not have the Flash player or have Javascript disabled will see these CSS-styled headlines, so it is important to get things looking the way you want before beginning to add sIFR.
sIFR is intended for headlines. While it is possible to use sIFR to replace other elements, such as paragraphs or list items, this is not recommended. Please also be careful with replacing links: browsers treat links in Flash movies differently than normal HTML links, so you may hurt usability if you use sIFR to replace links.
The second step is to export the Flash (.swf) file that will generate your new typeface.
To begin with, ensure that both the customize_me.as (see Protecting Commercial Fonts) and dont_customize_me.as files are in the same folder as the sifr.fla
file. You do not need to upload any of these three files to your
server, but they must all be in the same folder when you export your .swf file.
To export your new typeface, open the sifr.fla file
which is included with the download, and double-click the invisible
textbox in the middle of the stage. If the "Properties" palette is not
already visible, open it by selecting "Window > Properties", and
select which font you'd like to use from the drop down menu.
If you select a TrueType font, you can also create bold and italic
styles for your font by clicking on the "I" or "B" buttons.
To export the new file, choose "File > Export" and save as fontname.swf
The standard sifr.fla file contains most of the English
characters you will generally need. If you need to embed additional
characters or languages, click the "Character" button and select more
characters from there and re-export.
Copy and paste (or even better: learn and apply) the CSS rules found in the sIFR-print.css
file to your own print style sheet. These ensure that your original
headline styling will be printed, rather than the Flash replacements.
Apply the styles in the sIFR-screen.css file into your
own screen style sheet. These are the styles which will be applied by
the Javascript if Flash is found to be present on the user's browser.
You must call the sifr.js script on any page that will be replacing headlines. The following line in the <head> should do the trick:
<script src="sifr.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
There are some settings you can change which alter the behaviour of
sIFR. These settings are all booleans, which means they can be true or false. Here they are:
sIFR.bAutoInit: Initialize sIFR on load.sIFR.bFixFragIdBug: Determines whether the Fragment Identifier Bug will be fixed or not.sIFR.bIsDisabled: Determines whether sIFR will work or not.
sIFR.bHideBrowserText: Determines whether sIFR will hide the text you want to replace or not.
By default sIFR will hide the text you want to replace while the
page is loading. If you want to, you can change this behavior so sIFR
will hide the text when the elements are actually replaced. To do this
open sifr.js and add sIFR.bHideBrowserText = false; before sIFR.setup();.
(Actually sIFR sets the sIFR-hasFlash class, and CSS rules you specify, to control the hiding of the text. What this option really does is wait before setting the class.)
An example of how you configure these settings:
if(typeof sIFR == "function"){
sIFR.bHideBrowserText = false;
sIFR.bFixFragIdBug = false; // not recommended!
sIFR.setup();
};
If you want to enable/disable sIFR for a specific browser, you can
use the UA object as described below and you'll have to edit the
following code in sifr.js:
if(typeof sIFR == "function" && !sIFR.UA.bIsIEMac){
sIFR.setup();
};
In this example sIFR is disabled for IE/Mac. Remove the && !sIFR.UA.bIsIEMac part to enable it again. You can also add other browsers here.
This step involves adding the (JavaScript) replace statements into
the mix. These are the heart and soul of the script and are used to
ensure the correct headlines are replaced, and in the way you want.
They can be added in the sifr.js file, or at the end of your (X)HTML file.
If you put the replace statements in the JavaScript file, they'll be executed on onload or when you call sIFR(). If you put the replace statements in the body, they'll be executed immediately.
Effectively, this means that you could put the replacement code in the JavaScript and call sIFR() in the body. It won't make any difference.
The reason there are two methods to replace elements in sIFR is that the onload event is only fired when the page has fully loaded - including all images and other external files. This can take much longer than the actual rendering of the page, so replacing inside the body will make the replacement begin earlier, and thus sIFR looks to render faster.
To save bandwidth you can put the replace statements in the JavaScript file, and then call sIFR() in the body. The exact code you have to use in the body in this case is:
<script type="text/javascript">
if(typeof sIFR == "function"){
sIFR();
};
</script>
You can find more info in Where to Replace.
To replace the fonts you call sIFR.replaceElement. This method takes the following arguments, in this specific order:
sSelector: This is the CSS selector you use to select the elements you want to replace. The supported CSS selectors are #, > and .. Whitespace is used to select descendants. Please use whitespace only for this, so instead of #foo > p use #foo>p. You can use multiple selectors by seperating them with a comma (",").sFlashSrc: location of the Flash movie. You might need to use a relative (./movie.swf) or absolute (/movie.swf) here.sColor: Text color. All colors are in hex notation (#000000).sLinkColor: Text color for links.sHoverColor: Color for hovered links.sBgColor: Background color.nPaddingTop, nPaddingRight, nPaddingBottom, nPaddingLeft:
if you use padding in the elements you want to replace, you have to set
the amount of padding here (in pixels, but without the px part).
sFlashVars: extra variables you want to pass on to the Flash. These variables are seperated by &. You can use:
textalign=center: Center text horizontallyoffsetLeft=5: Pushes text 5px to the right. Of course you can use any number here.offsetTop=5: Pushes text 5px down.underline=true: Adds underline to links on hoversCase: Use upper to transform the text to upper-case, use lower
to transform the text to lower-case. Depending on the browser this
might give problems when you want to change the casing of special
characters.
sWmode: Set this argument to transparent if you want to use a transparent background. If you want to stack elements above the Flash movies, you need to set it to opaque. Mozilla browsers can have some difficulty rendering Flash movies with the wmode set. Therefore setting this is not recommended.
Transparency is not supported in Opera 7.x, Safari < 1.2 & Flash 6, in Linux, and in very old (pre 1.0) Mozilla versions. In these browsers sIFR will fall back to the background color instead of using transparency.
You are advised to use named arguments instead of placing the arguments in the correct order. Here's an example:
if(typeof sIFR == "function"){
sIFR.replaceElement("h1", named({sFlashSrc: "./vandenkeere.swf", sColor: "#000", sCase: "upper"}));
};
Read the named arguments article for more information.
The final step in implementing sIFR is to "tune" your fonts. As explained in "What is sIFR" sIFR works by measuring the size of the element you are replacing, and then generating the Flash text at a size that matches it. This is a fairly straightforward process, however, when, for example, your sIFR font has a different character width or letter spacing than the font used on the website, the scaling can cause the sIFR text to look really awkward. This can be solved by changing the size of the elements just before they are replaced.
When sIFR detects the right Flash version it sets a CSS class on the html element. Now, let's say you are only replacing h1's. If you want to create a specific style for those elements to change their sizes, you have use the following CSS rule:
.sIFR-hasFlash h1 {
visibility: hidden;
/* other CSS properties go here */
}
This is what we will call your decoy style. It will never be seen by users (because of visibility: hidden) but it will fine-tune the text a split-second before it is replaced.
In order to fine-tune the text you need to play around with the font-size, letter-spacing, line-height and height CSS properties.
You can use the debug method to prepare your page for fine-tuning. In the sifr.js file comment out the sIFR.setup() line and add sIFR.debug():
if(typeof sIFR == "function"){
sIFR.setup();
};
Becomes:
if(typeof sIFR == "function"){
// sIFR.setup();
sIFR.debug();
};
With sIFR in debugging mode and the decoy styles working
you can start tweaking the sizes. If you can't match it exactly, make
the browser text a bit narrower than the sIFR text. You will want to
also comment out the visibility: hidden; property.
If you want to test your changes you can run the following code in the address bar:
javascript:sIFR.debug.replaceNow();
Here's a handy bookmarklet you can use: sIFR: Replace now. Add it to your favorites and run it to see the elements being replaced.
When you're done restore the sifr.js file so sIFR.setup() is called again and enable visibility: hidden; again.
If you're using relative sizing for your font values in your regular CSS, the first thing you'll want to do is place pixel sizes into the font-size values of your decoy styles. This will give you a more level playing field. (Keep in mind that increasing and decreasing the pixel size in the decoy style can also change the size of your sIFR replacement text.) From there, you can begin tweaking the letter-spacing and then the line-height. This order seems to work well.
If you've used more detailed descendant selectors in your style sheet, you'll want to change your decoy styles from this: .sIFR-hasFlash h2 to something like .sIFR-hasFlash #content h2 (or whatever mirrors your regular CSS selector). If you have a heading with a class on it, you can write a selector like: .sIFR-hasFlash #content h2.separate
without a problem. Don't be afraid to get specific where you need to.
If you don't do this, the values in your regular styles will override
the .sIFR-hasFlash decoy styles for the same declarations
since they will have greater specificity. For example, if you have
line-height in both selectors, and you don't write a decoy style with
higher specificity, the value of your regular descendant h* selector
will override the decoy style and you'll be stumped as to why the decoy isn't obeying.
If you have long headlines, watch where the line break happens in the sIFR and try to match it in the decoy if possible. This is usually done with letter-spacing.
If you notice slight page shifting or jumping as you switch from decoy to sIFR, this can mean that one style is taking up more space vertically. Try adjusting your line-height to make them match more closely.
In the bottom of your page, in the actual JavaScript replacement
statements, the order they're entered can matter. In a page with an h4
styled as a callout (with borders, padding and margins) it was found
that Internet Explorer Mac was shifting the next heading, an h3, to the right about 30px. Changing the order of the replacements so that the h4 was loaded before the h3 fixed that little problem.
If, in your main CSS styles, you've written any values for font-size, line-height or letter-spacing, you will definitely want to overwrite these values in your decoy styles using pure pixels. This will give you cross-browser consistency.
As always, browsers have different default values. These differences
(especially in line height) can be one of the causes of a heading that
is large in one browser and small in another. Placing a background
color behind the heading, temporarily, should allow you to measure the
amount of space taken in each browser and correct it.
The FlashBlock extension for Mozilla browsers will show the alternate text instead of the Flash headlines. This means you'll have to style span.sIFR-alternate to override the decoy styles. You can test this by installing FlashBlock, or by installing Greasemonkey and the sIFR Tools script. Now, if you go to Tools > User Script Commands > sIFR - Act like FlashBlock you'll see the alternate text as FlashbBlock users see it.
This is absolutely the easiest and most enjoyable step involved with sIFR. Mark Wubben is known to view all new entries on iPod411.com just because of their use of sIFR.