In your @font-face
Friday, May 7th, 2010I was directed to a very interesting blog post the other day about Web FontFonts. Up until now the only half decent way to get around the limitations of web safe fonts has been to use a javascript replacement solution such as sIFR or Cufón. Which is all well and good but they do have limitations. For example, the actual process of swapping the text takes time and means that javascript replacement should be kept to a minimum. Plus, don’t forget that many users browse the web with Javascript disabled and some users don’t even have Flash which of course means that the replacement doesn’t work at all. Not to mention the legal implications of font licensing. The list goes on…
Cue the new @font-face CSS3 rule. @font-face allows fonts to be automatically retrieved from a server when required. This means that we’re no longer limited to the fonts installed on a users machine.
“This fairly new addition to CSS allows fonts to be linked in web pages and downloaded by browsers so that anyone who visits the page can view the fonts declared by the page’s designer.”
Obviously @font-face requires actual fonts to work and this is where Web FontFonts come into play. Web FontFonts are specifically licensed for use in this way and are available from fontshop.com. So far this new method seems only limited by the current fontshop collection, at 30 families it’s hardly a library, but it’s a start, a long overdue one at that.
As far as implementation is concerned, I might be inclined to hang on for a while and wait until more fonts become available.
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