Daniel Hruska There's absolutely no shortage of long-term reviews of iOS 7's appearance in recent weeks. Any more radical step always causes strong resentment among many stakeholders, and it is no different with the upcoming version of Apple's mobile operating system. Some "typhophiles" took to Twitter to air their concerns even before WWDC started.
Typographica.org: "Slim font spotted on banner at WWDC." Please no.
Khoi Vinh: Why iOS 7 Looks Like a Makeup Shelf: My Reflections on Using Helvetica Neue Ultra Light. bit.ly/11dyAoT
Thomas Phinney: iOS 7 preview: appalling font. Poor foreground/background contrast and unreadable slimmer Helvetica. The current UI built on Helvetica is already hard to read. The font slimming in iOS 7 really pisses me off.
Before you start nodding in agreement at these tweets, there are a few facts to be aware of:
- the release of the final version of iOS 7 is still a few weeks away
- no one can judge the effectiveness of a font cut in a dynamic OS from videos and screenshots
- none of the keynote commenters said a word about the font technologies that have apparently changed in iOS 7
People have already calmed down quite a bit during WWDC, as Apple engineers explained sufficiently in their presentations how iOS 7 handles fonts. At the same time, they revealed other necessary details of the new technology.
In his talk, Ian Baird, the person responsible for processing text on Apple's mobile devices, introduced what he called "the coolest feature of iOS 7" - Text Kit. Behind this name hides a new API that will play an important role for developers whose applications include text as one of the core visual elements. Text Kit was built on top of Core Text, a powerful Unicode rendering engine, but whose potential is unfortunately difficult to handle. Everything should now be simplified by Text Kit, which essentially acts as a translator.
Text Kit is a modern and fast rendering engine, whose management is integrated in User Interface Kit preferences. These preferences give developers full power over all functions in Core Text, so they can define very precisely how text will behave in all elements of the user interface. To make all this possible, Apple modified UITextView, UITextLabel and UILabel. Good news: it means seamless integration of animations and text (similar to UICollectionView and UITableView) for the first time in iOS history. The bad news: applications closely tied to textual content will have to be rewritten to support all these nifty features.
So what do all these new features mean in practice? Developers can now spread text in a more user-friendly way, across multiple columns, and with images that don't need to be placed in a grid. Other interesting functions are hidden behind the names "Interactive Text Color", "Text Folding" and "Custom Truncation". Soon, for example, it will be possible to change the font color if the application recognizes the presence of some specific dynamic element (hashtag, username, "I like", etc.). Longer texts can be shrunk into a preview without having to be limited to before/after/middle presets. Developers can easily define all these functions where they want. Typography-conscious developers will be thrilled with support for kerning and ligatures (Apple calls these macros “font descriptors”).
However, the hottest "feature" in iOS 7 is Dynamic Type, i.e. dynamic typeface. As far as we know, Apple's mobile devices will be the first ever electronic devices with so much attention focused on font quality, the first time since the invention of letterpress printing. Yes it's right. We are talking about the operating system, not the application or layout job. Although optical editing has been tried in photo-composition and desktop publishing, it has never been a completely automatic process. Some attempts turned out to be a dead end, such as Adobe Multiple Masters. Of course, there are already techniques today to scale the font size on the display, but iOS offers much more.
Thanks to the dynamic section, the user can choose (Settings > General > Font size) the font size in each application as he likes. In the event that even the largest size is not large enough, for example for people with impaired vision, the contrast can be increased (Settings > General > Accessibility).
When the final version of iOS 7 is released to tens of millions of users in the fall, it may not offer the best typography (using the Helvetica Neue font), but the system's rendering engine and other related technologies will offer developers the ability to conjure up beautifully readable dynamic text on Retina displays as we they had never seen him before.
What is the meaning of this sentence please? "may not offer the best typography (using Helvetica Neue)"
Is using Helvetica Neue the best typeface or is it just iOS 7?
Thank you
iOS 7 uses Helvetica Neue.
it is meant that (most people) may not think that the Helvetica Neue font used has the best typography
Many people would prefer the Myriad font instead of Helvetica Neue, which is newer and supposedly more suitable for displays. But my opinion is, although I'm not a typographer, Helvetica Neue looks great on retina displays and a dynamic cut. Moreover, it kind of already belongs to Apple.
Well, I traditionally prefer the good old Apple Garamond font from the last millennium, but I admit that it is more nostalgia than suitability for iOS... At least this my beloved font can be installed in the iDraw application for iPad, where you can write with it.
I personally like the iOS 7 typography, I've been using the beta since its release after WWDC and with each subsequent version the system is more perfect... The font is very legible under all circumstances and the fact that it is
I'm glad for this feature. My mother struggles with this quite a bit. I tried this feature right away in BETA and gave it to my mother to test and it helped her a lot (system application).
And why don't they put a font there that is impossible but certainly better readable? I understand that, according to the article, developers will have the option, but the system itself does not use it.
Dynymic type – incredible how small details can improve the feel of the text:)) thumbs up!