Research: Screen-based Typography

Is it just me or is that one of the prettiest research documents to emerge from a university PhD project? ;)

I was thinking the same thing.
I just couldn't wrap my head around that open question (19) - this is where the limits of my knowledge of the English language become painfully apparent. What exactly does she mean with "which area would you suggest the framework concentrate on"?

I would appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes filling in an online questionnaire.

Argh. It's a PDF form formatted for print. (It is pretty, though hard to read).

I guess this is semi-interesting, but this just seems to be an opinion poll of graphic designers. I'd much rather hear from the end users.

As for question #19 (and others) I drew a complete blank as well. I have no idea what she was talking about.

Yes, it does look nice, if a bit anemic. I love the fact that you can "submit" from it. But yeah, #19 stumps me too, and I'm actually used to weird research lingo. :-/

hhp

#19. What is asked is that whether typography would benefit, if it would study further "typography in New Media"? And if it would, which area(s) of New Media should it focus on?

That's how I got it. :)

If that's what it says, then it's a meaningless question, no? Wouldn't any research in any field improve the understanding of anything?

Shouldn't the project fail and any results be ignored solely because it requires software which only a tiny minority of potential participants possess? That has got to skew the results, if not make them meaningless as a sample, regardless of witty insights by those who are able to participate.

Darrel:
Meaningless? Well... I wouldn't call it meaningless. It's just that she should have perhaps separated the two questions or something to make more sense. I believe the issue on "which of the New Media areas should typography people focus on" is a really adequate topic and well worth discussing.

Broot Force:
You can fill it with browser plug-in. Many people do possess that. I wouldn't be as skeptical as You about this study. After all she has clearly explained HOW can you fill the thing - that's something you don't see very often around the net.

I think it is very good someone has gone through this issue and done the survey. Even if the results do not reflect the answers of all the netizens (and then there would be no use anyways, because most of the people browsing the web hardly understand anything about typography), it does not that thing should be an immediate failure. I am definitely waiting for the results with an interest.

Broot: huh? I would submit that a LOT of people (if not a majority) have the required plug-in... PDF is damn-near ubiquitous.

Troubleman: I read the question thusly: "If you were putting together a course on type in new media design, what might be some areas you would focus on?".

I answered that in addition to the basics, modern typographers need to learn more about accessibility.

And I concur: nice enough design... but it would have been better had it been laid out in landscape format, to make scrolling around less necessary.

Landscape rules.

hhp

I wouldn't be as skeptical as You about this study. After all she has clearly explained HOW can you fill the thing - that's something you don't see very often around the net.

It's a survey on 'new media (yuck)' typography, but she's using a print medium format. Many people may have the plug in, but those that would be interested in the survey (web people) hate the plug in and uninstall it. Not to mention that if you're using OSX, you can't even use the plug in.

That's not to discredit the survey, but it will be a very skewed set of respondants based on the technology limitations she created.

PDF is damn-near ubiquitous

Adobe would like you to think that. It really dosn't matter, though, because you need the full version of Acrobat to actually submit it.

Darrel & Broot:

A full version of Acrobat? I have the free webviewer and I had no trouble submitting. It may be true that there is still a large majority of people NOT using Acrobat -- but being that this is a survey focused at the web design/typography/design field -- Do not the MAJORITY of these professionals use Acrobat? I cant name a single individual in these fields -- that I know -- that does NOT use Acrobat. Myabe I'm missing something here, but I have a hard time seeing how the use of acrobat would "skew" the results of the survey.

hildebrant.

previous ammendment:
after acutally reading the intire post all the way through... I see that the plugin doesnt work in OSX (quite unfond of apple myself so wouldnt know)I could see how this might possibly skew the survey. So I restate my stance at 80% of the above mentioned post. :)

hildebrant.

I have the free webviewer and I had no trouble submitting.

Hrm. Maybe she's using a back-end system to capture the data then. I just read the above post stating that it was required, but you may be correct.

Do not the MAJORITY of these professionals use Acrobat?

I'm not a lover of PDF being the be-all-end-all format that so many people would like it to be. It's great for a lot of things. Web forms is not one of those things. So, I was finding it a bit ironic that a survey seeking to find out more about new media typography was using a print-format file type. That's my opinion.

The submission was confirmed via a server side script, so I believe your correct, as far as that goes.

I also agree with you on the fact of .PDF is not (currently) suited for web based forms, although it has opened up a whole new world of soft-proofing and proposal type documents for our firm. In saying that, I find myself drifting off topic.

hildebrant.

They should've just used HTML, yeah.

hhp

I opened the PDF document externally, and the "submit" button doesn't work.

"File Not Found /cgi/form3.cgi" is the error given by Acrobat.

If anyone knows how to submit this, please let me know.

Paul

From what I gather you need either the full version of Acrobat, or you need to do it from inside a browser.

hhp

Paul:

It looks like the only way is via the web based Acrobat plugin. If anyone knows how to contact them, they might want to mention -- at least using a absolute url in the submit script. something of the --http://www.website.com/cgi/form3.cgi -- nature.

Paul, you might be able to replace the scirpt with the absolute URL if you have the full version of Acrobat.
Just an idea, if you dont want to have fill out the form all over again. :)

The problem is how Adobe tries to make PDF an open format but puts all sorts of restrictions on what you can do with it.

The only way to allow people to use the free reader to submit PDF forms is to require the browser plug in. This then sends the data to the server like any online form's processor does.

If you have the full version Acrobat (or Acrobat Approval), you can fill out the form, then save it, and then email it.

PDFs are great for a lot of things, but their forms support is becoming less and less appealing to me.

Interesting comments. I love PDF for publishing, especially sharing documents across platforms. I generate them with my favorite applications, printing to file with a Postscript printer driver, then quickly postprocess with Ghostview + Ghostscript. However, I ripped the reader plug-in out of my browser; and I'm not about to put it back for a single survey. IMO, after numerous fair trials, the Internet proved insufficiently fast and reliable to feed me PDF page data on-the-fly; but it is sufficiently fast and reliable to download an entire PDF for viewing off-line. Trying to integrate PDF viewing and browsing primarily proved aggravating, never helpful. Others apparently had better experiences or evaluated their experiences differently than I. Well, that's what thinking is about.

Re: Acrobat and the plugin...

Is she intentionally trying to (severly) limit the number of respondents to design and creative professionals?

Hey, that would be kinda smart, if it could work.

hhp

I am the researcher who set up the questionnaire. I've just looked into the site and surprised to see interesting and (heated?) comments about the questionnaire.

I'm not surprised about the debate regarding PDFs for the submission of the questionnaire. I suspected that this choice would be controversial but went ahead because of 3 main reasons.
1. The look and feel of the questionnaire design. As a designer, I am still unable to accept the lack of display control of a HTML page. (something I still have to work on)
2. I wanted the form to be easy to fill in, ie good information design, with the questions, answers and instructions cleary marked out.
3. I believed that the PDF solution would have worked in all OS. Unfortuntely, I only found out that Acrobat plug-in does not support OSX after I had set up and designed the whole document for PDF. Hence time limitations meant that I could not set it up in HTML again.

So, actually, I am not trying to severly limit the respondents! But then, I would say all methods has advantages and disadvantages.

To all respondents who took time to actually overcome all the technical glitches to submit the questionnaire - a big Thank You.

I hope to submit the survey report/findings to Typographica as soon as it is ready. Maybe that will spark off more debates and discussions to chew on.

Joyce