Minor cosmetics

The last few days have been somewhat taxing so instead of sleeping early this evening I indulged myself in a little cosmetic work on the site. After implementing Google web fonts on several sites already, I'm convinced that it is the best combination of convenience/reliability to use alternative fonts quickly on the Web. My preferred method is to use free fonts and convert them to web formats and manually embed them, but only when time permits. For tonight, Google wins.

I chose EB Garamond for text and Open Sans for display for one particular reason, though I think the fonts do relatively well on screen: they are the only two Google web fonts that support the Unicode Vietnamese character set. Apparently, Vietnamese presents a special challenge due to the stacked nature of accent marks, which may be the reason why Google offers Vietnamese as its own character set filter while searching for fonts. Either way, I chose these fonts for now and so far it looks comfortable. I'm still smiling at using 300 weight on the headings instead of bold, it looks so clean :)

Perhaps that the most obvious change is that I increased the font size from 10.5pt to a whopping 16! Based on a couple of articles on the value of using the browser default font size and re-creating the printer's "paragraph" on the screen, I am experimenting with 16px to see how it works. I think my body width is out of proportion now, but that's a structural change that will have to wait until another day. And finally, I'm taking advantage of Blogger's built-in mobile framework with a stock template, so when the time comes for more major changes, I'm sure I'll switch to the custom mobile template and tweak it to my liking.

There it is, blogging instead of sleeping. Now I may drift in and out of consciousness at work tomorrow, but a little design dabble before bed is quite relaxing for me, and I needed it. Plus there's the feeling of accomplishment and refreshment, even after such small changes as these. For all who are keeping track, this minor cosmetic revision is version 4.1, with no foreseeable major release in the near- and semi-near future. Someday I will, though, mark my word. The crumpled-bag side bar must go.