1 Web Fonts

I remember when web fonts were discussed years ago, and how, when combined with CSS, which was shiny and new at the time, they would help bring our creative dreams to the web. Perhaps the time is finally here when we can get the web fonts movement rolling again. I, for one, am all for it.

posted at 06:07 am on August 28, 2007 by Dan Johnson

2 Thanks

Thanks for the insightful article. I too have thought this, and yes it would relieve a whole lot of headaches.

The other alternative to think about us utilizting the Flash platform. Flash can be used to generate the font image and it’s then inserted in your page as a flash image. Still extensive effort – but a good workaround.

The other thing I have seen a lot of people do is write custom scripts (Eg PHP) that generate image headings etc based on a font. I have used this technique and it works quite well, but still not the ideal.

posted at 06:34 am on August 28, 2007 by sherif mansour

3 Untitled

Your point on web fonts is definitely true, though I don’t know if TrueType is the best way to go. What’s the license situation for TrueType? Would Apple open it up or do they make money from it?

Perhaps we should push browsers to adopt SVG Fonts, whch would be a great solution for this since SVG fonts should be referenceable from HTML CSS as well. Both Gecko and WebKit have bugs open for that, though Gecko’s SVG engineers have said they’re not going to add font support until at least late 2008. Opera already seems to support it. Of course, getting Microsoft to support SVG Fonts would be tough, but getting Microsoft to support pretty much anything new in Internet Explorer is tough.

I think adding rules that are conditional on which font actually gets used would be a great idea.

posted at 07:34 am on August 28, 2007 by Richard Connamacher

4 Oh no

There are so many bad web designs out there. If you add the capability to use your own fonts, it will definetely get worse. I think there is absolutely no need for an average web page to use an “exotic” font. Might be a good toy for designers, but nothing necessary for the real world (the web pages providing information or commercial solutions).

posted at 07:37 am on August 28, 2007 by Adam Kay

5 Flash alternative

There actually also is a flash alternative for this PDF font solution. Sifr (www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/). I think it is widely used these days even by bigger websites…

posted at 07:53 am on August 28, 2007 by Sanne Wijbenga

6 Installations?

So basically I have to install software on my Mac for this to work? Isn’t that the same as getting users to install certain fonts on their machine. I’m not talking about cost, I’m just merely talking about the effort.

Should we then have messages on the home page? “This site is best used with Prince installed”, or have I missed something somewhere?

posted at 08:34 am on August 28, 2007 by Nick Toye

7 Untitled

Good argument. And I tend to agree. However I fear what kind of abuse could come from this. Being visually impared I am sure this would only decrease the accessibility of the web for me. Even if I could disable the imported fonts. Because most pages then wouldn’t be optimised for the font I would view it in.

I like the idea, being somewhat of a designer myself I would love the possibility. But the implementation should not come at the cost of accessibility. And in it’s current state it does. If any clever people can come up with a way around that then I’m all for it.

posted at 08:47 am on August 28, 2007 by Wilco Fiers

8 Fonts fonts fonts, yawn!!

Why are designers so much concerned about fonts all the time? Fonts are over-idealized as if they could solve all design problems, and the complaint that “in print” there are so many fonts available comes up every two seconds.

The web is not print. I am happy that designers do not have the freedom to bring their favorite fonts from print to the web, because, they are made for printing. Web fonts need to look good on the screen, when they are just 12 pixels high or less, and they should do so with anti aliasing turned off. The provided examples even look bad with anti aliasing enabled.

There are a few fonts available optimized for screen display. Most of them are pre-installed with all operating systems. Use them and stop worrying.

And finally, stop missing things that you could do with print and start enjoying things you can do on the web. Enjoy the space you have, use scrolling, unlimited colors, animation, etc etc etc … If you can only miss fonts, i guess the web is not your place.

posted at 08:56 am on August 28, 2007 by Dragan Espenschied

9 Joy eternal!

MySpace pages can now be made even more illegible! Teens the world over will rejoice!

Seriously though, I think we should just leave the existing web font set as it is. It’s bad enough that Comic Sans is in there without enabling people to use anything more “exciting”.

posted at 09:01 am on August 28, 2007 by Jonathon Hayward

10 Untitled

Though the first three, examples looked great, the next three did not render properly. The final one did. (Firefox 2.0.0.6 Ubuntu Feisty)

posted at 09:12 am on August 28, 2007 by shawn price

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