New Options for Web Fonts

Charles Hamilton — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:00:58 +0000

Until recently, web designers didn’t have much control over the fonts we could use. We were pretty much limited to the small number of fonts that came with popular operating systems. Microsoft and others developed some web font systems, but they weren’t compatible with all browsers. There’ve also been some useful workarounds like sIFR, although, being Flash-based, these had limitations and were tricky to use.

Now, however, there are some very promising options for embedding fonts into web sites, using simple additions to a web site’s CSS (style sheet). I’ve been trying a few of these web font services, and so far, they all work well.

TypeKit

TypeKit (please see the disclosure at the bottom of this post) currently offers over 500 fonts, and its font library will shortly be expanded, thanks to an agreement between TypeKit and Adobe to make Adobe’s font collection available on the platform. TypeKit has several pricing plans, and it offers a free trial. TypeKit is used by WebWorkerDaily and the other GigaOM Network sites.

WebINK

WebINK from Extensis has recently become available in public beta, and offers almost 2,000 fonts. WebINK’s pricing is based on the number of websites included, fonts needed and the storage used.

FontsLive

The FontsLive service from Ascender offers around 125 fonts. Its pricing varies depending on the font(s) used and on website size/bandwidth uses. It offers a free 30-day trial.

Google Font API

Google is also getting into the act, having recently released the Google Font API. It’s a Google Labs project, and as of now, only offers about 20 fonts, so it may not be suitable for production environments. But as with many Google products, it’s being offered at no cost.

Webtype

Ascender and The Font Bureau have just announced Webtype, so I haven’t had time to try it yet. It appears to offer about 100 fonts. Webtype’s pricing is based on the number of fonts and amount of bandwidth used. A free trial is available.

In addition to the service listed above, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is developing an open format called Web Open File Format (WOFF) that, if adopted, will bring more options. So we can hope that it’s only a matter of time before the ubiquity of fonts like Times New Roman and Arial comes to an end.

Disclosure: TypeKit is is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d): HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps

Get Under the Hood of Firefox 3.5 RC With Mozilla Hacks

Samuel Dean — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:00:57 +0000

If you’re using the new Release Candidate of Firefox 3.5, and many of us are, it’s worth looking into the posts at the Mozilla Hacks site to get to know how some of the most powerful new features in the browser work. There are more than 5,000 new features in the new version, as detailed in the Release Notes. Here are some of the more compelling tutorials and videos to look into at Mozilla Hacks.

In Firefox 3, there was support for color profiles in tagged images, but it was disabled by default. Christopher Blizzard has a good post up on the support for color correction for tagged images found in Firefox 3.5. He compares images rendered by Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5 and Photoshop.

Firefox 3.5 has support for web fonts (check out this video of Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie demonstrating web fonts to Aliza), and you can find a good demonstration of how to use them and some of the new CSS features in the browser here.

One of the biggest new additions in Firefox 3.5 is the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which can really speed up many web applications. Here, you can find a good video demonstration of what TraceMonkey brings to the table, comparing Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 3.

There are new geolocation features built into Firefox 3.5, and you can find a good discussion of how to work with them here. Some users don’t want the geolocation features enabled for privacy reasons. If you want to disable them, Lifehacker has a good description of how to do so here.

Especially if you’re a web developer using Firefox 3.5, it’s a good idea to keep up with the posts at Mozilla Hacks on how to use the many new features. The folks posting the demos are from Mozilla, and the information runs pretty deep, so it should help you get the very best out of your new browser.

Have you switched to Firefox 3.5 RC? If so, what new features do you find yourself excited about or using most?

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