One of the new features in the CSS specification lets web developers embed third-party fonts that users can use directly in a web page. Learn how to use this useful feature.
by Kurt Cagle
November 5, 2009
ince the first browsers came out, web designers have wanted to use custom fonts on their sites. It makes perfect sense: you should be able to choose not only your content but also the typesetting of that content. What has kept designers from doing so are the cost of high-quality fonts, the low quality of freely available, user-supplied fonts, and the uneven font support from mainstream browsers. All that may be about to change, however, as I learned this past Halloween.
To celebrate Halloween this year, I switched the heading fonts on my web site from their fairly generic Times Roman format to something more suitably spooky. While this sounds like a relatively easy task (just making a change to the CSS), I knew from previous experience that the state of embedded fonts on the Web was fraught with peril for any graphic designer. So, I decided to look into the issue a little more deeply. Beyond finding really cool fonts for my site, I also discovered that a new generation of typography may be about to emerge on the Web.
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ince the first browsers came out, web designers have wanted to use custom fonts on their sites. It makes perfect sense: you should be able to choose not only your content but also the typesetting of that content. What has kept designers from doing so are the cost of high-quality fonts, the low quality of freely available, user-supplied fonts, and the uneven font support from mainstream browsers. All that may be about to change, however, as I learned this past Halloween.
