to hell with web safe fonts
DESCRIPTION
Outlining some issues with the current approaches for fonts on the internet, and discussing some alternatives: more creative font stacks and font embedding. Presented at Barcamp Antwerp March 21 2009. More at http://lensco.beTRANSCRIPT
WEB SAFE FONTS
To hell with
Lennart Schoors
Me
.web designer at Netloghttp://www.netlog.com
. blog at http://lensco.be
Web Safe Fonts
Fonts on the internet today
You can do cool things with Times New Roman
.Verdana
.Arial (Helvetica if you’re lucky)
.Lucida Grande
.Georgia
. limited, sometimes boring font stacks
But still ...
Alternatives
. image replacement, sIFR, Cufon, ...
.accessibility
.maintenance
.often hard to get it just right
. flash of content
.dependency (Javascript, Flash)
.more pain in the ass than they should be
Solutions?
Option one: spice up your font stacks
font-family: Plantin, "Plantin std", "Plantin", "Baskerville", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;
Go wild!
.Vista/Office fonts
.Calibri, Candara, Corbel, Cambria, ...
.Centhury Gothic, Rockwell,Garamond, Gill Sans, ...
. (OS X) system fonts
.American Typewriter, Futura, Optima, Palatino, Helvetica Neue (weights!), ...
. type foundry fonts
.Frutiger, Meta, Archer, Gotham, DIN, ...
.watch your fallbacks (weight, width)
.The Quick Brown Fox
.The Quick Brown Fox
.The Quick Brown Fox
check the font matrix: icanhaz.com/fontmatrix
Solutions?
Option two: font-embedding
@font-face
.part of CSS2
. simple
@font-face { font-family: "Fontin Sans"; src: url(FontinSans.otf); }
h1 { font-family: "Fontin Sans", serif; }
Support
.Safari 3.1
.Firefox 3.5
.Opera 10
. IE4
Since IE4!? What’s the catch?
.Embedded Open Type (EOT)
.encoded & limited
.WEFT (Web Embedding Fonts Tool)
WEFT 3.2 (°2003) – cumbersome and annoying
<!--[if IE]> <style> @font-face { font-family: "Fontin Sans"; src: url(FontinSans.eot); } </style><![endif]-->
IE chokes on prescribed procedure, so:
IE implementation
.EOT = new standard?
. fear of ‘DRM’
.Access Control Headers
.Foundries are hesitant
.Similar to music and movie industries
.Why not experiment with hosted, licensed fonts?
The piracy issue
Until then
.www.webfonts.info
.www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com
.Popular free fonts for embedding:
.Graublau Sans Web, Fertigo, Fontin, Fontin Sans, Kaffeesatz, Museo, ...
Summary:
Get creative
Get creative!
.Expand your font choice
.Mix fonts (like em, strong, links, quotes, ...)
.Use weights, font-styles, small caps,(font-stretch), ...
.Mind variations in size and legibility
.Test all fonts in your stack on all platforms
Rockwell, Helvetica Neue, Optima and Andale Mono on www.lensco.be
We got rid of the “web safe” colors, now let’s get rid of “web safe” fonts!
That’s all folks!. http://www.seedconference.com/
. http://www.markboultondesign.com
. http://24ways.org/2007/increase-your-font-stacks-with-font-matrix
. http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/weft3/default.htm
. http://jontangerine.com/log/2008/10/font-face-in-ie-making-web-fonts-work
. http://webtypography.net/talks/skillswap09/
Read on at http://lensco.be