The Type We Want

The Type We Want
Using Fonts on the Web

Friday, November 6, 2009

Why?
Typography is a key element in deﬁning
style
feel
mood
readability


The Font Tag
Ooh, we can make it look pretty!


Font Tag


I
feel
pretty.
Oh
so
pretty.

Images
Any font but at what price?


Images
Images allows for any font to be used
Only practical for limited items with short text
Abused by clients
Printing is less than ideal


CSS and Font Stacks
Flexible design but who gets to see it?


CSS
#pretty
{

font-‐family:
Arial,
Helvetica,
sans-‐serif;
}
#prettier
{

font-‐family:
"Gotham
Medium",
sans-‐serif;
}


Oops
I
want
to
look
pretty
I
want
to
feel
pretty
I
want
to
be
pretty

Common Font Stacks
Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Courier New, Courier, monospace
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif


Complex Font Stacks
//
Verdana
Alternative
font-‐family:
"Segoe
UI",
Candara,
"Bitstream

Vera
Sans",
"DejaVu
Sans",
"Bitstream
Vera

Sans",
"Trebuchet
MS",
Verdana,
"Verdana

Ref",
sans-‐serif;


Complex Font Stacks
Better Font Stacks
http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-stacks/

8 Deﬁnitive Web Font Stacks
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/eight-deﬁnitive-font-stacks


sIFR, Cufón, Typeface
Now we’re getting somewhere


sIFR
sIFR requires JavaScript AND Flash
Slow for a lot of elements
Best used for headlines
Can be diﬃcult to tweak
Support for CSS features is limited


Cufón
Generates SVG font and VML outlines
Draws to <canvas> in all browsers that support it
(ie: not IE)
No text selection
Original text is made invisible
Supports some CSS Styling (more than sIFR)

Typeface.js
Supports additional CSS styling over Cufon such as
letter-spacing and font-stretch.


Licensing
Most licenses aren’t very clear and should be
clariﬁed with foundry
Many fonts don’t allow embedding in this fashion


@font-face
Have we reached utopia?


TrueType (TTF) & OpenType (OTF)
Supported in Firefox 3.5+, Safari 3+, Opera 10+
Including Opera Mobile
Expected in Chrome 4
Can be enabled in Chrome now with a command
line switch


Embedded OpenType (EOT)
Support in IE4+
TTF2EOT
Command line
Web services exist to make this conversion
WEFT
Complete and utter garbage


Getting from OTF to TTF to EOT
The problem with the EOT apps is that they require
a TTF and most fonts today are OTF.
FontForge will convert OTF to TTF
Font names aren’t transferred and must be set
manually to allow TTF to EOT process to work
reliably.
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/screencast-converting-ttf2eot


SVG
Chrome 0.3+ support with no need for a command
line ﬂag
Works on iPhone OS3.1+
Opera bug doesn’t show embedded font on second
tab
Text selection works but not consistently


Creating SVG Fonts
FontForge
Requires tweak to XML namespace
Batik
SVG may need to be cleaned up to remove
extraneous data (empty nodes and attributes)


Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
in Firefox 3.6 (beta 1 just released)
Supported by major font foundries


Creating WOFF Files
Command line tool: sfnt2woﬀ
Mac or Windows
http://people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woﬀ/


Bulletproof @font-face
@font-‐face
{

font-‐family:
'MuseoCustom';

src:
url('MuseoSans-‐500.eot');

src:
local('Museo
Sans
500'),

local('MuseoSans-‐500'),

url('museo.woff')
format('woff'),

url('MuseoSans-‐500.ttf')

format('opentype'),

url('museo.svg#museo')
format('svg');
}


All-in-one Conversion
Font Squirrel provides a one step conversion
process
Upload TTF or OTF
Provides EOT, SVG and WOFF format
Does subsetting
Creates example HTML and CSS


Subsetting
Font ﬁles can be megabytes in size
Arial Unicode MS is 23MB
Many fonts are still 100K+


Subsetting
Subsetting reduces the number of glyphs in the ﬁle
great for latin languages
not so great for asian languages


Subsetting Gotcha
Be careful removing lower case glyphs if using
upper case
IE and Opera have a bug with text-transform:
uppercase that will use fallback font instead of
subsetted font


Licensing
Most fonts, even some free fonts, DON’T allow
@font-face embedding
Foundries that support WOFF haven’t provided
updated licenses yet
Contact them directly for more info


Performance
Firefox, Opera shows unstyled text until font
downloaded (FOUT!)
Blocking in IE if <script> before @font-face
declaration; otherwise, unstyled until font
downloaded
Safari, Chrome show no text until font
downloaded
Opera doesn’t show the embedded font after
the ﬁrst page
http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2009/10/09/more-font-
face-fun/
http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/10/13/font-face-and-
performance/

Compression
EOT and WOFF support compression
WEFT compresses by default, TTF2EOT doesn’t
Use GZIP compression where font isn’t already
compressed
uncompressed EOT
TTF, OTF, and SVG


Font Embedding Services
TypeKit
Typotheque
Kernest


Disadvantages of FES
If the server goes down, does your design have a
suitable fallback?
Some services require JavaScript
None of the services serve SVG
Services obfuscate to prevent ability to install font
permanently
Not cached


Resources
FontForge
http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

Batik
http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik/tools/font-converter.html

FontSquirrel Generator
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator


Where to get fonts
FontSquirrel
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

TypeKit
http://typekit.com/

Typotheque
http://www.typotheque.com/

Kernest
http://www.kernest.com/


Presentation Fonts
Headlines: League Gothic
Free and open source; supports all manner of
embedding
Body: Museo Sans 500
Free and supports @font-face embedding as long as
you link back to the foundry
Additional weights available for sale
Code: Consolas
Comes with Microsoft Oﬃce
Not free and requires special EOT embedding license


Questions?
Hit me with your best shot. Fire away.


The Type We Want

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