Bill Hill: The Future of Reading on the Web, Part 2

Posted By: Dan Fernandez | Oct 20th, 2008 @ 8:35 AM | 53,079 Views | 32 Comments
This is the second part of the interview that Dan and Christian did with Bill Hill.  (See Part 1 here).
 
While many people know Bill from his work on True Type and his passion for improving screen readability, Bill is now working on improving Web readability in Internet Explorer and how reading on the Web hasn't improved since the early days of browsing.

In this part of the interview we continue with the discussion on font embedding. But this time Bill Hill tells us also about readability in general, shows us his website and thoughts that he had during designing the reading and layout experience for it. In one of the various side stories he explains to us how and why the letters in our alphabet evolved as they did. By the end of the interview Bill Hill shares some personal stories that includes also how he started to learn reading animal tracks.

To see Bill's site using font embedding and clean HTML/CSS with multi-page flow, go to http://www.billhillsite.com.

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#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 9:33 AM
Skriker V1.0
Skriker V1.0
Need more money...
Why did we have such a long delay in posting this?

Awsome video Smiley
#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 10:13 AM
dentaku
dentaku

The heading in http://www.billhillsite.com/ doesn't wrap correctly in IE7 so I'm assuming the site is designed for IE8?
It gives me a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom and a whole lot of nothing to the right even at 1440X900.

I DO find that site very easy to read though, so I like it.

#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 11:22 AM
collabart
collabart
If you are honest about wanting to bring this technology to _ALL_ web users including Safari and Firefox users, then I suggest you add OpenType to the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (or possibly the Community Promise depending on what you want to achieve). If you intend to extract license fee's from competitors using patents once they have adopted this technology then you might as well keep it to yourself.

Great talk though. I really liked the point about adopting the computers to the human eyes instead of vice versa.
#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 12:22 PM
spivonious
spivonious

Mr. Hill is a pleasure to listen to.  I think he should get his own show.

#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 1:02 PM
jason818_253.33
jason818_253.33
Yippi skippy
Great interview. i particularly liked the part when it turned to tracking and the evolution of our alphabet.

Lascaux cave drawings
Lascaux wiki

In my subscription to National Geographic there is an add that has a picture taken of cave writings. I was fascinated by the idea that these are early forms of writing. Place a camp fire in the cave and let it flicker on the walls and you have early form of moving pictures that must have been mesmerizing to the creator and his friends. I wonder what the price of admission was. Maybe they traded furs or stone cutting technologies maybe it was some kind of social bonding.  The art work and rendering of such animals is remarkable. I think these cave paintings are a testament to the legitimacy of the human brain during prehistoric times. Ill bet these people had the intelligence to use a computer if they had them. It makes me think, that if we compare the computer technology to those cave drawings that there are still many more advancements to be made in technology. Particularly in writing and communications.

#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 3:18 PM
manotype
manotype

I assume you're talking about Embedded OpenType - which, by the way, is also the Web font embedding scheme which Adobe supports.

We never had any thought of extracting license fees from competitors for this technology, now or in the future. It's implicit in handing it over to the W3C as a Web standard that granting rights to any IP it uses is part of the package.

#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 3:30 PM
manotype
manotype

Correct, the site is designed to use the default Web-standards rendering in IE8. A horizontal scroll bar, ugh!

Try IE8 Beta 2 - it's terrific, very stable, and has a compatibility button so older websites don't break.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/

And please let me know if you still have problems. 1440 x 900 should be ideal, that's what it was created on.

#Oct 20th, 2008 @ 3:54 PM
manotype
manotype
Thanks for the kind words.

Some great books:

"Guns, Germs and Steel" and "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond.

"The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" by Spencer Wells.

You might like to read my paper "The Magic of Reading", which is posted on my website.

http://www.billhillsite.com/osprey.doc
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