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.be
5. But still ...
. Verdana
. Arial (Helvetica if you’re lucky)
. Lucida Grande
. Georgia
. limited, sometimes boring font stacks
6. 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
9. 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!), ...
10. . 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
18. The piracy issue
. 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?
19. Until then
. www.webfonts.info
. www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com
. Popular free fonts for embedding:
. Graublau Sans Web, Fertigo, Fontin,
Fontin Sans, Kaffeesatz, Museo, ...
21. 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