{"rowid": 148, "title": "Typesetting Tables", "contents": "Tables have suffered in recent years on the web. They were used for laying out web pages. Then, following the Web Standards movement, they\u2019ve been renamed by the populous as `data tables\u2019 to ensure that we all know what they\u2019re for. There have been some great tutorials for the designing tables using CSS for presentation and focussing on the semantics in the displaying of data in the correct way. However, typesetting tables is a subtle craft that has hardly had a mention.\n\nTable design can often end up being a technical exercise. What data do we need to display? Where is the data coming from and what form will it take? When was the last time your heard someone talk about lining numerals? Or designing to the reading direction?\n\nTables are not read like sentences\n\nWhen a reader looks at, and tries to understand, tabular data, they\u2019re doing a bunch of things at the same time.\n\n\n\tGenerally, they\u2019re task based; they\u2019re looking for something.\n\tThey are reading horizontally AND vertically\n\n\nReading a table is not like reading a paragraph in a novel, and therefore shouldn\u2019t be typeset in the same way. Designing tables is information design, it\u2019s functional typography\u2014it\u2019s not a time for eye candy.\n\nTypesetting tables\n\nTypesetting great looking tables is largely an exercise in restraint. Minimal interference with the legibility of the table should be in the forefront of any designers mind.\n\nWhen I\u2019m designing tables I apply some simple rules:\n\n\n\tPlenty of negative space\n\tUse the right typeface\n\tGo easy on the background tones, unless you\u2019re giving reading direction visual emphasis\n\tDesign to the reading direction\n\n\nBy way of explanation, here are those rules as applied to the following badly typeset table.\n\nYour default table\n\nThis table is a mess. There is no consideration for the person trying to read it. Everything is too tight. The typeface is wrong. It\u2019s flat. A grim table indeed.\n\n\n\nLet\u2019s see what we can do about that.\n\nPlenty of negative space\n\nThe badly typeset table has been set with default padding. There has been little consideration for the ascenders and descenders in the type interfering with the many horizontal rules.\n\nThe first thing we do is remove most of the lines, or rules. You don\u2019t need them \u2013 the data in the rows forms its own visual rules. Now, with most of the rules removed, the ones that remain mean something; they are indicating some kind of hierarchy to the help the reader understand what the different table elements mean \u2013 in this case the column headings.\n\n\n\nNow we need to give the columns and rows more negative space. Note the framing of the column headings. I\u2019m giving them more room at the bottom. This negative space is active\u2014it\u2019s empty for a reason. The extra air in here also gives more hierarchy to the column headings.\n\n\n\nUse the right typeface\n\nThe default table is set in a serif typeface. This isn\u2019t ideal for a couple of reasons. This serif typeface has a standard set of text numerals. These dip below the baseline and are designed for using figures within text, not on their own. What you need to use is a typeface with lining numerals. These align to the baseline and are more legible when used for tables.\n\n\n\nSans serif typefaces generally have lining numerals. They are also arguably more legible when used in tables.\n\nGo easy on the background tones, unless you\u2019re giving reading direction visual emphasis \n\nWe\u2019ve all seen background tones on tables. They have their use, but my feeling is that use should be functional and not decorative.\n\nIf you have a table that is long, but only a few columns wide, then alternate row shading isn\u2019t that useful for showing the different lines of data. It\u2019s a common misconception that alternate row shading is to increase legibility on long tables. That\u2019s not the case. Shaded rows are to aid horizontal reading across multiple table columns. On wide tables they are incredibly useful for helping the reader find what they want.\n\n\n\nBackground tone can also be used to give emphasis to the reading direction. If we want to emphasis a column, that can be given a background tone.\n\n\n\nHierarchy\n\nAs I said earlier, people may be reading a table vertically, and horizontally in order to find what they want. Sometimes, especially if the table is complex, we need to give them a helping hand.\n\nVisually emphasising the hierarchy in tables can help the reader scan the data. Column headings are particularly important. Column headings are often what a reader will go to first, so we need to help them understand that the column headings are different to the stuff beneath them, and we also need to give them more visual importance. We can do this by making them bold, giving them ample negative space, or by including a thick rule above them. We can also give the row titles the same level of emphasis.\n\n\n\nIn addition to background tones, you can give emphasis to reading direction by typesetting those elements in bold. You shouldn\u2019t use italics\u2014with sans serif typefaces the difference is too subtle.\n\nSo, there you have it. A couple of simple guidelines to make your tables cleaner and more readable.", "year": "2007", "author": "Mark Boulton", "author_slug": "markboulton", "published": "2007-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/typesetting-tables/", "topic": "design"} {"rowid": 167, "title": "Back To The Future of Print", "contents": "By now we have weathered the storm that was the early days of web development, a dangerous time when we used tables, inline CSS and separate pages for print only versions. We can reflect in a haggard old sea-dog manner (\u201cyarrr\u2026 I remember back in the browser wars\u2026\u201d) on the bad practices of the time. We no longer need convincing that print stylesheets are the way to go1, though some of the documentation for them is a little outdated now.\n\nI am going to briefly cover 8 tips and 4 main gotchas when creating print stylesheets in our more enlightened era.\n\nGetting started\n\nAs with regular stylesheets, print CSS can be included in a number of ways2, for our purposes we are going to be using the link\nelement.\n\n\n\nThis is still my favourite way of linking to CSS files, its easy to see what files are being included and to what media they are being applied to. Without the media attribute specified the link element defaults to the media type \u2018all\u2019 which means that the styles within then apply to print and screen alike. The media type \u2018screen\u2019 only applies to the screen and wont be picked up by print, this is the best way of hiding styles from print.\n\nMake sure you include your print styles after all your other CSS, because you will need to override certain rules and this is a lot easier if you are flowing with the cascade than against it!\n\nAnother thing you should be thinking is \u2018does it need to be printed\u2019. Consider the context3, if it is not a page that is likely to be printed, such as a landing page or a section index then the print styles should resemble the way the page looks on the screen.\n\nContext is really important for the design of your print stylesheet, all the tips and tricks that follow should be taken in the context of the page. If for example you are designing a print stylesheet for an item in a shopping cart, it is irrelevant for the user to know the exact url of the link that takes them to your checkout.\n\nTips and tricks\n\nDuring these tip\u2019s we are going to build up print styles for a textileRef:11112857385470b854b8411:linkStartMarker:\u201csimple\nexample\u201d:/examples/back-to-the-future-of-print/demo-1.html\n\n1. Remove the cruft\n\nFirst things first, navigation, headers and most page furniture are pretty much useless and dead space in print so they will need to be removed, using display:none;.\n\n2. Linearise your content\n\nContent doesn\u2019t work so well in columns in print, especially if the content columns are long and intend to stretch over multiple columns (as mentioned in the gotcha section below). You might want to consider Lineariseing the content to flow down the page. If you have your source order in correct priority this will make things a lot easier4.\n\n3. Improve your type\n\nOnce you have removed all the useless cruft and jiggled things about a bit, you can concentrate more on the typography of the page.\n\nTypography is a complex topic5, but simply put serif-ed fonts such as Georgia work better on print and sans serif-ed fonts such as Verdana are more appropriate for screen use. You will probably want to increase font size and line height and change from px to pt (which is specifically a print measurement).\n\n4. Go wild on links\n\nThere are some incredibly fun things you can do with links in print using CSS. There are two schools of thought, one that consider it is best to disguise inline links as body text because they are not click-able on paper. Personally I believe it is useful to know for reference that the document did link to somewhere originally.\n\nWhen deciding which approach to take, consider the context of your document, do people need to know where they would have gone to? will it help or hinder them to know this information? Also for an alternative to the below, take a look at Aaron Gustafson\u2019s article on generating footnotes for print6.\n\nUsing some clever selector trickery and CSS generated content you can have the location of the link generated after the link itself.\n\nHTML:\n\n
I wish Google could find my keys
\n\nCSS:\n\na:link:after,\na:visited:after,\na:hover:after,\na:active:after {\n\tcontent: \" <\" attr(href) \"> \";\n}\n\nBut this is not perfect, in the above example the content of the href is just naively plonked after the link text:\n\nI wish Google