This dra­matic wall­pa­per is taken from the beau­ti­ful Jason Brooks illus­tra­tion on the web­site of Fierce Angels, from their septem­ber 2006 re-style. A beau­ti­ful dark angel, with a big sword, high heeled boots and a thun­der­ous sky above her. What more could you want?

This wall­pa­per is also avail­able for your HD mobile screen!

Down­load for your desktop:

• Jason Brooks  —  Fierce Angel 2006 1024×768
• Jason Brooks  —  Fierce Angel 2006 1440×900 (widescreen)

Download for your mobile:

• Jason Brooks  —  Fierce Angel 2006 Mobile HD Wallpaper (640×960)

Enjoy!

It’s time to update the CSS3 @font-face browser sup­port table. It doc­u­ments spe­cific­ally how browsers act when either the whole font fam­ily is spe­cified (reg­u­lar, italic, bold, bold-italic & small-caps) or only the reg­u­lar ver­sion of the font is spe­cified. The test-case that this based on uses the ideal, easi­est (lazi­est) imple­ment­a­tion and can be found on its own page here.

This is a robust­ness test. What hap­pens if some font vari­ants don’t load? What if there’s only one vari­ant to begin with? Will inform­a­tion be lost? Those ques­tions can be answered with this test.

Here’s the res­ults of how browsers in 2012 render the test case, com­pared to the ref­er­ence ren­der­ing. Mobile browsers have been added too.

Can the browser pick up the style natively?

How are mobile browsers with nat­ive variants?

Conclusion: Many browsers (Chrome, Opera) have made tre­mend­ous pro­gress. Only Safari is still lack­ing in its imple­ment­a­tion, in the edge case where Small-Caps text has added emphasis. IE 10 goes the curi­ous route of emu­lat­ing all vari­ants and styles from the reg­u­lar version.

Can the browser emu­late from the reg­u­lar version?

Do mobile browsers emu­late properly?

Conclusion: Safari and most mobile browsers still fall back to reg­u­lar style. This means web developers can not use web fonts for body text if they have only one (reg­u­lar) vari­ant nat­ively avail­able to them.

The most up to date sup­port table, with pretty col­ours, can always be found on its own page along­side the test case. It also has more notes on lig­at­ures and small-caps support.

Why is fall­ing back to reg­u­lar style so bad?

It makes sen­tences full of expres­sion look like sen­tences full of expres­sion. It removes part of the typo­graph­ical ele­ments of a text, which is ironic, given that @font-face is meant to embel­lish it typo­graph­ic­ally. At its core, fall­ing back to reg­u­lar style removes information.

So what does this mean we should do?

Browser developers:

• Safari devs: please work on emu­lat­ing bold, italic, bold-italic, etc. when they’re not present. Browsers do this already when it comes to system-fonts, which means web developers expect this to work.
• Also give some thought to pick­ing up “font-variant:small-caps;” in your @font-face code. It’s the only way to ensure proper fall-back. Emulating, (like Firefox & Opera you all now do!) is a step for­ward, but it’d be a pity to stop there.
• If HTML 5 has taught us any­thing, it’s that browsers should be more bul­let­proof, not web designer’s code. Also: ask­ing web developers to spe­cify as little as pos­sible is a better.

Web design­ers:

• Using @font-face when you only have the reg­u­lar ver­sion of a font at your dis­posal is not a good idea. Especially for body text. In safari. And on nearly all mobile platforms.
• Using a (less lazy, less prac­tical) more bul­let­proof way of spe­cify­ing your @font-face fonts is recom­men­ded (alas) for now.

My Jason Brooks-based wall­pa­pers have been spot­ted in the wild! I try to crop, edit and adjust his illus­tra­tions as best I can, and hope that it’ll pro­duce a wall­pa­per that really works for people. I can never know for sure though, even after 5 years, if what I do gets used a lot or how it looks on vari­ous mobile devices.

El Cee was kind enough to inform me that The Mix: Summer 2009 Wallpaper worked really well on his Samsung Galaxy Note, which is really great! If you’ve got an action shot of one of my wall­pa­pers in action, don’t hes­it­ate to send it in!*

* You can con­tact me via Twitter :)

Imagine heaven. The feel­ing of being there. It’s relax­ing, no wor­ries, no rush, no stress, only light­ness, pure­ness and eleg­ance. Based on a fine Jason Brooks illus­tra­tion here’s a light-blue wall­pa­per which brings a taste of that feel­ing to your screen!

The illus­tra­tion is from the Hed Kandi Disco Heaven 2011 cd cover. It fea­tures some great house music and is avail­able dir­ectly from Hed Kandi or from Amazon. The illus­tra­tion itself is also avail­able on can­vas from Hed Kandi themselves.

Here’s the pre­view of the full-screen desktop wall­pa­per (down­load links are below):

Here’s the first, cropped ver­sion for mobile screens:

Down­load for your desktop:

• Hed Kandi Disco Heaven 2011 (1600×1000 wide-screen)

And last — but not least — a down­load for your mobile:

• Hed Kandi Disco Heaven 2011 iPhone4 back­ground (640×960)

It’s time for a nice pink one again :) Featuring disco angels and babes around a sparkly disco ball and sur­roun­ded by dia­monds, this wall­pa­per really bright­ens up your desktop (or mobile of course!). This wall­pa­per comes from a Jason Brooks illus­tra­tion for the 2005 Hed Kandi com­pil­a­tion album: Hed Kandi: Mix 50. It’s avail­able from Amazon.

Here’s the pre­view of the full-screen desktop wall­pa­per (down­load links are below):

Here’s the cropped ver­sion for mobile screens:

Down­load for your desktop:

• Hed Kandi The Mix: 50 (1600×1000 wide-screen)

And last — but not least — a down­load for your mobile:

• Hed Kandi The Mix: 50 iPhone4 back­ground (640×960)

Today we have a deli­cious blue wall­pa­per for you, fea­tur­ing a very chique sparkly hippy blonde. She has a slightly bohemian disco vibe going on, which is quite fun. With a nice aqua­mar­ine back­ground it should work well on your desktop or mobile! The Jason Brooks illus­tra­tion is from the Disco Heaven 2010 cd cover (avail­able dir­ectly from Hed Kandi and from Amazon too).

Here’s the pre­view of the full-screen desktop wall­pa­per (down­load links are below):

And here’s a cropped ver­sion for mobile screens:

Down­load for your desktop:

• Hed Kandi Disco Heaven 2010 (1600×1000 wide-screen)

And last — but not least — a down­load for your mobile:

• Hed Kandi Disco Heaven 2010 iPhone4 back­ground (640×960)

A mobile-only wall­pa­per today! It’s a nice sunny illus­tra­tion from Jason Brooks for the Hed Kandi: Serve Chilled 79 cd (avail­able from Amazon). It fea­tures two fant­astic gals relax­ing after a nice game of lawn ten­nis and a per­fect blue sky to make the pic­ture com­plete. What more could you ask for?

Here’s the pre­view of the mobile wallpaper:

Down­load for your mobile:

• Hed Kandi Serve Chilled 79 Tennis iPhone4 back­ground (640×960)