the life and times of endenizen » html5

First, an announcement from today: the next version of Android. Better performance, wifi tethering (!), ‘update all’, and more! I can’t wait to get this. These are much-needed updates that make the platform much more powerful. Check out the embedded video below for details.

[Via: Google Announces the Next Version of Android.]

Next, an announcement from yesterday: easy web fonts! The previous solutions to non-web-fonts-on-the-web involved rendering images, embedding flash objects, or using canvas (when it was available). These methods might have gotten the job done, but they were difficult to implement and each had its share of drawbacks.

Along comes Google Font API and all those problems disappear. Now you can easily use real fonts without adding complexity. Best of all, it’s cross-browser (even IE6!) and works just the way it should: just set the font-family in css. I’ve already added a new font to my blog which you can see in the screenshot. It really was as easy as they say:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
<style>
  body {
    font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;
    font-size: 48px;
  }
</style>

(Note: I’m not actually using Tangerine. I tried it, and it’s gross.)

[Via: Making Good Typography on the Web Easier: Google Introduces Font API and Directory.]

Trying to decide whether to implement that great HTML5 or CSS3 feature you just read about? Take a look at the HTML5 & CSS3 readiness dashboard to see if it’s supported in your target browsers. It’s not the most visually informative or user-friendly way of presenting the data but it works. It’s also neat to compare the state of the browser in 2010 with 2009 or 2008.

[Via: information aesthetics]