Thanks for that information re:TrueType! My knowledge of these things tends to end at the browser, but I too hold hope for better type in future OS-s.
The fact that Apple decided to tackle this on iOS, an OS used on handheld devices which are typically viewed at closer distances, tells me that it’s something they feel is worth doing when you have the display resolution to do it right.
SmartUnderline makes a similar assumption, not applying itself to links with a small-enough font-size computed style.
With respect to your [edit] block:
> Obviously, it's a lot easier to fix this issue with a single font, as Apple has done in Messages.
Apple has implemented this throughout iOS 8, not just in Messages. Here’s a screenshot of Safari [1].
> I'd rather not have to worry about the background, font and select background colors for every link.
That’s actually the beauty of SmartUnderline. It figures all of these things out for you, automatically [2]. Please let us know if you run into any trouble though. :)
Re: [2], nicely done! For a dirty hack around browser limitations, it is well implemented. It's a good thing gradient backgrounds behind text are out of style. : P
If a background-image is specified, we abort [1]. (This would apply to CSS gradients as well.) Of course we’d like to support non-solid backgrounds at some point, but short of a true HTML-to-canvas solution, there’s not really that much better you can do without wreaking lots of havoc.
Nope, it traverses up the DOM until it finds an element which has any non-transparent background. If the first thing it finds has a background-image, it aborts. If it’s a solid color, it returns that container. [1]
This absolutely still is prone to bugs when `position` or other properties are used to move elements visually outside of their parents, but it’s about as good as you can do without a true HTML-to-canvas implementation.
The fact that Apple decided to tackle this on iOS, an OS used on handheld devices which are typically viewed at closer distances, tells me that it’s something they feel is worth doing when you have the display resolution to do it right.
SmartUnderline makes a similar assumption, not applying itself to links with a small-enough font-size computed style.
With respect to your [edit] block:
> Obviously, it's a lot easier to fix this issue with a single font, as Apple has done in Messages.
Apple has implemented this throughout iOS 8, not just in Messages. Here’s a screenshot of Safari [1].
> I'd rather not have to worry about the background, font and select background colors for every link.
That’s actually the beauty of SmartUnderline. It figures all of these things out for you, automatically [2]. Please let us know if you run into any trouble though. :)
[1]: http://postimg.org/image/4ncgrezxr/
[2]: http://git.io/9YNfgg