What page fonts do web designers need?

From July 14 to 19th, on TypeCon 2009, held in Atlanta, people discussed how to embed fonts in the Web (Web font embedding:the New State of the debate), for this meeting, there are the following twit ter messages can be found in the @typographica of Stephen Coles and the @splorp of Grant Hutchinson.

What do Web designers need?

Web designers need more options, they need more fonts, and currently, web font alternatives such as SIFR and Cufón allow designers to use fonts other than web-safe fonts to achieve better design, but they are essentially alternatives that can only be used occasionally for headings or small amounts of text. Translators Note: Many of these programs are through special tools, a font needs to be displayed in the text generated flash material, and then the flash material embedded in the page corresponding to the location, the defects of these schemes are obvious.

What does the font design company need?

Font design companies do not want their fonts to be uploaded to the site, so fonts can be easily misused. The @font-face in CSS3 allows you to link directly to the font original file as we link to a picture.

Downloading these fonts is also as simple as downloading a file, and it is obvious that font companies do not like this approach. The copyright model of the recording industry is not suitable for the font industry, because the font design has not yet become a trade association industry, most of them are single-handedly, font theft is very harmful to them.

Solution

Back to 1997, Microsoft developed a dedicated embedded OpenType format (EOT), essentially a thumbnail version of OpenType. EOT only supported IE, in order to be universal, Microsoft in 2007 to submit EOT to the Global Consortium (for CSS3 use), at the end of 2007, the Global Consortium rejected Microsoft's proposal, one reason is security issues. Microsoft submitted the program again in 2008, and Microsoft said in the proposal:

Embedded font Format (EOT) is a technology developed by Microsoft that allows OpenType fonts to be embedded in Web pages and can be downloaded to browser rendering, which is downloaded and rendered according to the definition of @font-face in CSS. The font file for the EOT suffix. These files are temporarily installed on the user's system only in the current page active state.

EOT has been described as DRM in OpenType, and once EOT and DRM are linked, the outlook is immediately dimmed. For technical details on EOT, refer to the Embedded OpenType (EOT) File Format of the consortium. EOT, what the hell's going on? Simply put, the font industry is unwilling to support it.

. Webfont

Recently, two respected font designers Tal leming and Erik van Blokland have proposed an alternative to EOT, a technology that is not proprietary and not complex to implement, H&FJ described on Twitter. Webfont:

Compact, open, elegant, forward-looking, realistic. (http://twitter.com/H_FJ/status/2655923216)

Simply put,. Webfont is the embedding of the access permission form in the font, the browser can read the license information and decide whether to download and render the fonts. The Webfont scheme has been widely welcomed and supported by the font industry (and even Typekit supports it), but that does not mean that we will soon be able to use it. WEBFONT,W3C first of all, make sure that most font vendors support the technology before they start their long and slow process. Then the browser provides support, and it may take years to complete the process.

About this technology David Berlow's Permissions Table for OpenType proposal can give us some hints (technical details), simply by embedding the license information in the font file, for example, Embed a site in the font for information that has permission to use a font.

The technology does not need to make changes to the original font file, only need to embed some additional license information in the font file. Some people think that this is good but also very dangerous, because everyone can open the font file to edit the license information themselves. Another benefit of this technique is that CSS @font-face can refer directly to the font without any program, while @font-face is supported by almost all browsers.

Other programmes

In addition to. Webfont, Typekit is also a noteworthy solution, simply put the font on a third-party server for invocation.

You pay Typekit to use a font, they give you a JavaScript code embedded in your Web page, such as:

#introduction .one p {
font-family:"skolar-1","skolar-2","Palatino","Georgia","Times","serif";
}

The following is an example of a Typekit (http://forabeautifulweb.com/):

The last Thought

We need consensus, but consensus can only be achieved through compromise. The font industry does not have an industry association to vote for a resolution, the closest way is to find all the support. Webfont's font company. Although there are security issues with Webfont, most heavyweight font companies support it. Webfont, see @typegirl Twitter message Most of the important foundries are the supporting #web Font

If the final agreement is not reached, the. Webfont will stay in the proposal phase forever, and if agreed, we'll see it in the browser. The earliest time of Webfont is probably 2011-2012 years. Ultimately, no matter which scheme wins, the font designers have to hurry, and most of the fonts are not yet optimized for on-screen display, and if they compete with fonts that have already been optimized (such as Verdana), they have a heavy workload ahead.

Original address:http://ilovetypography.com/2009/07/20/web-fonts-%E2%80%94-where-are-we/