Source: besttechInfo.com

A rumour that spread like wildfire across the web a month ago has now metamorphosed into a big, exciting News butterfly. Facebook is on a journey to take on the might of Apple and Google in the mobile market, much like Leonidas and his 299 fellow under-dressed men.

Project Spartan, as it is known, is Facebook’s plan to develop their own new App Store; think iTunes but through Facebook. While not too much has been said yet (Spartans are men of action, not words) it is not too difficult to imagine what the project could lead to.

This will allow for e.g. making better use of some features like Facebook Credits for sales, in-app purchases and thus making more profit.  It is a clever battle-plan which the Financial Times and Playboy have already kicked off.

Apparently about 80 outside developers and companies (including Farmville and The Huffington Post) are contributing to the project, and we also know now that Apple is giving a certain level of support.

This effort from Facebook to bring a whole new experience to the iOS devices is something to celebrate. It would be nice to see this new platform being spread through other mobile devices, let’s say… Android OS for instance!
It may very well push developers and the rest of the industry to have more interest in HTML5 and CSS3 features, pushing forward new web standards.

source: Slashgear.com

The exciting news for our clients however is that it is a new contender in the app market with Facebook’s 750-million users behind the top brand.

Thought Den’s experience with the technology, HTML5 and Javascript will allow our clients pretty much instant entry to the service.

Now less talk about the naked men fighting please!

With HTML5 & CSS3 constantly peeping round the corner (iPad sites, HTML5 article) we need to prep ourselves to deliver client’s rich websites to the highest standards. There’s a lot of changes going on and during the transitional period we’re updating our CSS font-techniques at Thought Den.

The industry
The font industry is apparently in a bit of turmoil for both designers and producers. The Font-designers are trying to hold onto their previous/old/out-dated/”wake-up and get with the times” print-based payment model. While the web-based font factories are trying to break it the business open into a mass/does it make profit/lowering standards/can it make money iTunes micro-payment model.
Then, the producers (us in the Den!) are trying to deliver our clients (you!) (or “you!” soon, after you’ve contacted us) a sexy web-package that will work across the most browsers and by using a technique that will last longer than a flash-in-the-pan 5 minutes.

What did we find?
There are currently many articles to help guide and inform the decision, namely from the popular web standards site, a list apart. This article in particular, “Web Fonts at the crossing” has helped round up the current full technical details,
- HTML5 & CSS aren’t fully supported everywhere yet
- IE6 to IE8 can only support a particular type of font extension
- Firefox, Chrome & Safari are pushing the boundaries
- IE9, it sounds like Miccy-soft have made an Internet Explorer browser half decent!

Thought Den will… (client round-up)
… be using the new tools/bold technology for making sure your site and its fonts are viewable across as many browsers as possible so it’s readable on many devices as possible.

Thought Den will… (techie round-up)
… be using the @font-family tag with,

Google Code (for hosted fonts)
- http://code.google.com/webfonts

Embedded Fonts (for creating fonts)
- http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

Restricted Fonts (for expensive fonts)
- http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/

Onwards!