Chris’ Corner: Unusual Ideas
I like how Alan questions something nearly all of us take for granted: What if We Used Proportional Fonts for Code Blocks? And he kinda leaves it at that. What if.
Lots of text is almost certainly easier to read in a non-monospace font, but is lots of code easier to read? And spaces/tabs are the same width, so we’d still get consistent indentation on the left, correct? Things would just stop lining up as the characters in subsequent lines differed.
I’m intrigued by it, but admit I’ve never tried it. Nor is it available on CodePen yet. But I wouldn’t rule it out. CodePen can be about experimentation. We do offer some pretty out-there choices like Comic Code and Monaspace Radon, which feel way nicer than you’d think using full-time (but are still monospace). Maybe we should offer the Wallace & Grommit font (jk I don’t think you can actually buy it).
While we’re talking unusual fonts, I should mention Jason Santa Maria’s Citywide has some cool awards, including Font of the Year through user voting.
AnnnNNddddD while we’re talking about unusual ideas, here’s some more:
- A JS Crossword where “every clue is a JS eval of its answer”, uh, and it’s very hard.
- Heydon has a super interesting new project called HYPERBLAM which “lets you make music with HTML”. The sandbox lives on CodePen.
- Maybe try going to make some letters with some letters, which somehow works with a bunch of different fonts.
