sIFR 3 without Flash Pro
There are currently two tools available which generate sIFR 3 movies for you, meaning you don’t have to use the Flash IDE to export them yourself. First there’s sIFR Generator, run by Richard Odekerken, which lets you upload a TTF file which is then turned into a sIFR movie. sIFR Generator currently generates movies compatible with r419, so it’s not useful if you want to use the latest sIFR 3 release. Which, of course, you should.
Update, November 25th: sIFR Generator now supports r436.
Also of importance are the legal issues surrounding the uploading of TTF files to a third-party server. Richard writes:
This is a Software-as-a-Service tool. Using this software requires you to upload font files to our website. By uploading the fonts you grant us permission to use the font, on your behalf, to create a sIFR SWF file that contains the font, and make it available to you.
All intellectual property rights and copyrights that apply to the original font, also apply to the generated font file. This file is made available only to the party who uploaded the font file.
We do keep fonts uploaded to sIFRGenerator.com for debug and statistical purposes.
Also available is sIFR Font Maker by CoffeeCup Software. This is a free, open source tool that runs under Windows. It too generates r419-compatible movies, but unlike sIFR Generator there is no notice of this fact. This, along with the lack of direct links to sIFR 3 pages is something CoffeeCup should fix. That said, it does run locally, so that’s a plus over sIFR Generator in terms of uploading TTF files.
I’ve seen a few reports of links not working properly in movies created via sIFR Generator. It wouldn’t surprise me if this issue is present in sIFR Font Maker as well, since they’re quite likely to use the same underlying software. But, if you need to create a font file, and don’t have access to the Flash IDE, and are okay with using r419, these tools are for you.
Hi Mark,
I am using sifr3 on a project, and trying to use the syntax in my xhtml. It works on development server, but I get the error “missing variable name” from firebug on production.
Any idea as to what could be going on?
Cher Stewart | 19 January 2009, 19:40 | link
Hi Cher, perhaps you could post your question with an example to the forum?
Mark Wubben | 22 January 2009, 23:33 | link
I figured it out - I am serving up filenames (so then variables) by the permalink of the model, wouldn’t you know the first font I added started with a number. Can’t do that in Javascript!
Cher Stewart | 25 January 2009, 08:14 | link
The Update says that www.sifrgenerator.com now supports r436 but none of them have worked and created them with Flash pro is hit and miss. Has anyone used a .SWF from sifrgenerator that works? Can anyone clarify what settings you need to create a .SWF movie in Flash Pro CS3?
Justin Alei | 4 February 2009, 17:00 | link
Hi Cher. this swf sifr 2 & sifr 3 UTF-8 (MN, Mongolia ) support not work . please help
gansukh | 19 February 2009, 06:56 | link
Would you consider sIFR3 to be ready for a production corporate web site? In other words, is sIFR3 still in beta or is it in stable release?
Thanks,
Jason
Jason M | 19 February 2009, 19:16 | link
Hi Jason,
In short: sIFR 3 fixes some serious shortcomings of sIFR 2. Bugs remain, but most likely you won’t run into them. Ergo, go ahead and use r436, but do keep an eye out for developments.
I need to reorganize the project, open up the bug list, and just make things more clear and work on some new code. In the mean time, r436 rocks.
Mark Wubben | 19 February 2009, 20:53 | link
This is really nice, and I loved the link to online font converter. However, I did not make all the fonts antialias advanced. One of the fonts, Mrs Eaves Italic, I had to embed in flash to make it behave properly.
Have you had any similar experience with this?
nitech | 1 March 2009, 21:17 | link
Hi Mark,
In the past two weeks I’ve discovered two fonts (in the same family) that don’t seem to work with sIFR 3, no matter how I try to embed them. Those fonts are: Trade Gothic Bold Condensed 20, and Trade Gothic Bold 2. Both are very nice fonts, but I’ve had to downgrade to sIFR2 both times in order to get them to show up. Other fonts from that same family, exported the same way, will show up just fine in sIFR 3. Font converters such as the one mentioned in this post won’t work either, as that entire family is a set of .PFM (postscript) fonts. We were wondering if you knew anything about this?
Dylan | 16 April 2009, 17:51 | link
Hi Dylan, it sounds as if these fonts are being exported as
font-weight: bold. You need to specify.sIFR-root { font-weight: bold; }in thecssparameter forsIFR.replace()for he text to be displayed.Mark Wubben | 16 April 2009, 23:11 | link
Another option is to enter the same font file in Regular, Italic and Bold in sIFR Font Maker, even if it doesn’t include italic or bold. This is how I got this font to work: http://postmodernvillage.com/fonts/daisymae.html . Apparently sIFR doesn’t emulate bold or italic, nor does it fall back to anything (not even “?????”) when glyphs are missing from the font. Bug in sIFR?
Something else I noticed is that I had to first install the font in Windows, that is, copy the TTF file into the %windir%\Fonts folder and import it from there, or it wouldn’t convert it.
marnie | 16 May 2009, 20:14 | link
That’s a bug in Flash, or rather, I’d say its by design. The fake bolds and italics are created when you export the movie, they can’t be emulated when the movie is used.
Mark Wubben | 16 May 2009, 22:24 | link