Web typography
Web typography refers to the use of fonts on the World Wide Web.
Description
When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each Web browser.
There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display until Netscape introduced the tag in 1995, which was then standardized in the HTML 2 specification.
However, the font specified by the tag had to be installed on the user's computer or a fallback font, such as a browser's default sans-serif or monospace font, would be used.
The first Cascading Style Sheets specification was published in 1996 and provided the same capabilities.
The CSS2 specification was released in 1998 and attempted to improve the font selection process by adding font matching, synthesis and download. These techniques did not gain much use, and were removed in the CSS2.1 specification.
However, Internet Explorer added support for the font downloading feature in version 4.0, released in 1997.
Font downloading was later included in the CSS3 fonts module, and has since been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This has subsequently increased interest in Web typography, as well as the usage of font downloading.
Alternatives
A common hurdle in Web design is the design of mockups that include fonts that are not Web-safe. There are a number of solutions for situations like this.
One common solution is to replace the text with a similar Web-safe font or use a series of similar-looking fallback fonts.
Another technique is image replacement. This practice involves overlaying text with an image containing the same text written in the desired font. This is good for aesthetic purposes, but prevents text selection, increases bandwidth use, and is bad for search engine optimization.
Also common is the use of Flash-based solutions such as sIFR. This is similar to image replacement techniques, though the text is selectable and rendered as a vector. However, this method requires the presence of a proprietary plugin on a client's system.
Another solution is using Javascript to replace the text with VML (for Internet Explorer) or SVG (for all other browsers).
Font hosting services allow users to pay a subscription to host non-Web-safe fonts online.
Most services host the font for the user and provide the necessary @font-face CSS declaration.
See also
External links
- Web typography @ Wikipedia
- Popular design guides are responsible for plague of grey type @ Boing Boing
- Contrast Rebellion - "Low-contrast font color and unreadable texts? To hell with them!"
- Web typography resource collection @ Boing Boing
