How To Turn Your Handwriting Into A Font

Add the ultimate personal touch to any document: turn your handwriting into a font and use that. There’s a lot of creative potential here, and it’s a lot easier to do than you’d think thanks to MyScriptFont.

Friends don’t let friends use Comic Sans. It’s just a bad idea. If you want a font that looks handwritten, don’t mess around: create a custom handwriting font with your own writing and use that.

Once you do so the possibilities are endless. You can easily use your own handwriting for that comic you’re working on. You can add “hand-written” notes to your favorite photo. Or you could just type notes and print them, because you’re too lazy to actually write a letter but want to pretend you did.

It’s entirely up to you, and with MyScriptFont the process to create a handwriting font couldn’t be simpler. Download and print a PDF, then fill in the squares with your own handwritten letters. Scan that, upload and the site will do the rest. Let’s work through the process together right now.

Making Your Handwriting Font

To get started head to MyScriptFont.com. You’ll see the following straightforward instructions:

Download the PDF and print it out. Use a black, felt-tipped pen and fill in all of the letters. Yes: you have to use an actual pen and paper. Accented characters, which you’ll find at the bottom of the page, are optional but recommended. When you’re done, scan your printed document in grey-scale.

Save your scanned file as an image and you’re ready to upload. Head back to MyScriptFont.com and upload your filled in form. You’ll need to wait a while; the processing can take a while.

When it’s done you’ll see a preview of your new font, and be able to download it. My handwriting is terrible, so my font kind of sucks:

Happily my wife Kathy has legible handwriting, so her font works quite well. Check it out:

These handwriting fonta are great for adding a personal touch to documents, so use your imagination. Your handwriting reflects your personality, so this font will as well. Sure, it’s not as flexible or emotive as your actual handwriting, but it’s a great way to quickly add a personal touch to a presentation or document.

Not sure how to install this font on your computer? Don’t worry; it’s easy. Tina outlined how to install fonts on Windows, Mac and Linux, so check that out if you’re not sure what to do with your new font file. On most systems you can simply open the font and click the “Install” button, but the above directions can help if you’re not sure what to do.

Conclusion

Of course, this isn’t the only way to make your own handwriting font: we’ve outlined tools for making your very own fonts before. If you want to try your hand at typography those tools are worth checking out, at least to start with.

Found a font on a piece of paper or online image, but aren’t sure what font it is? Rather than designing it yourself you should check out WhatFont, a site that can identify almost any font. You won’t be disappointed.

How are you going to use your custom font? Let me know in the comments below, along with links to your creations if you’re so inclined to share with the world.

The post How To Turn Your Handwriting Into A Font appeared first on MakeUseOf.

WebM and Broken Promises

Two years ago, a surprising post from Chromium's blog announced that Google Chrome will drop support for H.264 HTML5 videos. "Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies."



Nothing happened since then, so I assume that Google changed its mind. Mostly likely, Google hoped that this announcement will increase WebM's adoption, but that was wrong. Other than YouTube, few other sites converted their videos to WebM. Why spend time and money to convert videos when they could simply use a Flash player?



After all, Adobe Flash doesn't support WebM and that's the second broken promise: "As Kevin Lynch mentioned today at Google I/O, we are excited to include the VP8 video codec in Flash Player in an upcoming release, which will help provide users with seamless access to high quality video content on all of their Internet-connected devices," announced a blog post from 2010.



Adobe didn't support the VP8 codec, so Flash is still mostly H.264-only. And so are Internet Explorer, Safari, iOS, Windows Phone. WebM is mostly non-existent in the mobile space and that's where the future lies. Even if Android 2.3+ supports WebM, there aren't many devices with hardware acceleration for WebM.



Now Firefox's Windows nightly builds allow you to play H.264 HTML5 videos using the Windows Media Foundation backend. "That means if you're using a Windows computer that already has a licensed H.264 decoder installed, you'll be able to enjoy HTML5 video that's been encoded using MPEG LA's codec."



That means in the near future the most important browsers will support H.264 videos natively and WebM will matter even less. There's a VP8 successor that's more efficient, there's WebP for images and there's the WebRTC API for native video chat apps, but H.264 will continue to dominate web video. Those broken promises just made it more obvious.

Opera Switches to WebKit

After many years of dealing with site compatibility issues, Opera found the solution: it will switch from its proprietary rendering engine (Presto) to WebKit.



"Presto is a great little engine. It's small, fast, flexible and standards compliant while at the same time handling real-world web sites. It has allowed us to port Opera to just about any platform you can imagine. And unlike what some people seem to believe, Presto was actually designed from the ground up with compatibility in mind. It was always a goal to be compatible with the real web while also supporting and promoting open standards. That turns out to be a bit of a challenge when you are faced with a web that is not as open as one might have wanted. Add to that the fact that it is constantly changing and that you don't get site compatibility for free (which some browsers are fortunate enough to do), and it ends up taking up a lot of resources - resources that could have been spent on innovation and polish instead," explains an Opera employee.



The problem with Opera is that it has a low market share on the desktop (about 1-2%) and not many web developers bother to test their sites in Opera. Google's sites have always had issues in Opera and most Google web apps don't officially support Opera (check the system requirements for Google Drive). Gmail's help center actually mentions that "We don't test Opera, but believe it works with all of Gmail's features." Probably Google doesn't want to allocate resources for testing sites in a desktop browser that's not popular, but it has a completely different rendering engine.

In a perfect world, browsers and sites would just follow the standards and everything would work well, but it takes time to create the standards and browsers implement their own version in the meanwhile. Not to mention that browsers have all kinds of quirks.



Google launched Chrome in 2008 and one of the reasons why it chose WebKit was that "we knew we didn't want to create yet another rendering engine. After all, web developers already have enough to worry about when it comes to making sure that all users can access their web pages and web applications."



WebKit started in 2001 as an Apple fork of KDE's KHTML engine, it was used to build Safari, a few years later it was open sourced and Nokia ported WebKit to Symbian. WebKit is now the most popular mobile rendering engine, since it powers Safari Mobile and all iOS browsers (other than thin clients like Opera Mini), Android's stock browser, Chrome for Android and many other mobile browsers. WebKit's combined market share is now more than 40%, according to StatCounter and Wikimedia's stats.

Download Mozilla Firefox 18.0.2 Final Version

I have discussed many times about Mozilla Firefox's importance among web browsers. It's one of the best web browser today. The Firefox developers team have introduced many new features and facilities in regular interval. I have given you Firefox version 18.0.1 review and download link few days ago. Now Firefox has updated their browser to version 18.0.2. So here I give you the download link.

Don't wait anymore, update your Firefox to the latest version for better web surfing.



Click here to Download Firefox Latest Version

Ensure Your Facebook Competition Doesn’t Shut Down Your Page [Weekly Facebook Tips]

If you run any sort of Facebook page – even a small one – you may have considered running a competition. And why not? Competitions are a great way to get people talking and interacting with your page, which is just what you want to keep things on your page active and interesting.

You should listen to a few words of caution though before you get started, as not all of your competition ideas will be approved by Facebook. There are a few important things to note about competitions that you need to adhere to. If you don’t, Facebook might shut down your page. Read on and make sure you know what’s allowed and what’s not.

Entrants Can Like, Add Apps Or Check In – That’s All!

To keep your competition in the clear with Facebook, the only actions on Facebook that you can require of your entrants is liking a page, adding an application or checking into a place. Anything else is not allowed and could get your page banned!

So, in other words, condition of entry to the competition can’t include entrants uploading photos, making a wall post, sharing a post or answering a question in a comment. They can do this for fun, but it can’t be a requirement of the competition. Sadly, many page managers don’t understand this and will ask users to do these things in order to enter a competition.

Don’t Use Facebook Tools For Competition Entry

You also need to ensure that there is another step to registration for the competition. This means you can’t have a competition where liking a page, checking in or adding an app automatically enters people to the competition. It can be a condition of entry, but not the mechanism by which they are entered.

Notify Winners Directly, Not Via Facebook

You must not notify your competition winners using Facebook tools. So, you can’t send a Facebook message, inform them via chat, or let them know on their timeline or Facebook page.

Distance Yourself From Facebook

All competitions need to ensure that it is very clear to entrants that you, not Facebook, are running the competition. This includes clearly stating that Facebook in no way endorses or administers your competition, ensuring each entrant completely releases Facebook from responsibility, and noting that any data collected for the competition is collected by your organisation and not by Facebook.

Use An App To Promote The Competition

All promotions and competitions must be conducted within Apps on Facebook. Facebook suggest using a canvas or Page app to promote the competition. As you can see, if you aren’t allowed to communicate with entrants via Facebook, it is really important to collect their contact information somehow.

Disclose All Restrictions Clearly

You must ensure when running a promotion or competition on Facebook that any limitations are clearly disclosed. This includes expiration dates, eligibility to enter (e.g. age limits or residency requirements) or any limits on redemption.

You Must Be The Merchant Or Manufacturer

For any offers on Facebook, you must be an official merchant or manufacturer of the goods on offer. If the offer can be redeemed with other merchants, it’s your responsibility to discuss terms with them before you begin your promotion or competition.

Keep It Legal

Don’t forget that many countries and states have their own rules about what is allowed in a public competition and what’s not. Do try to look up your local laws and ensure that you are on the right side of the law there too. Don’t let your competition ruin your business!

Full Facebook Page Guidelines

Facebook have a detailed page outlining the guidelines for all pages, including competition guidelines. It’s worth reading this page occasionally to ensure you’re up-to-date on the current guidelines.

The post Ensure Your Facebook Competition Doesn’t Shut Down Your Page [Weekly Facebook Tips] appeared first on MakeUseOf.