Typography On the Web Gets Different 378
bstender writes "Most major browsers — including the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera — recognize a CSS rule known as @font-face. What that means, in brief, is that Web developers can now easily embed downloadable fonts in their pages. To see an example, load up Firefox 3.5 or Safari 4 and learn more. You'll see three new typefaces — Liza, Auto, and Dolly — used in the body text and headlines."
No doubt the licensing issues are just as complex as the font nerd potential.
Oh Lord! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh the agony... (Score:2, Insightful)
Self-downloading fonts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fonts (Score:2, Insightful)
Licensing? Nightmare.
Bandwidth? Eek.
Security? Whoa!
Compatibility? Doesn't downgrade nicely (that page looks horrible in a "stable" browser of today and is almost unreadable)
Gains? Geocities-like webpages that use every font they can just for the sake of it. Seven million websites written in Comic Sans. And only the sensible browsers will come with options to turn the damn thing off (and thus look even worse).
Stupid idea, stupid execution (having to DOWNLOAD every font mentioned on a page?)
Web developers can now easily embed... (Score:3, Insightful)
The average "Web developer" knows nothing about type, and thinks "kearning" is something you do to corn on the cob. Read a whole essay in Trainwreck Bold Oblique? No thanks.
kulakovich
Re:Oh Lord! (Score:3, Insightful)
Abused but Necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
I can easily see this getting abused.
Your prediction need only look back on UI technologies like Flash to realize that there will certainly be some of an "artistic" nature that will be enabled by this new technology to make their page look like this [chkchkchk.net]. Don't get me wrong, I love !!! and their music. And I find the site amusing. Horrendously confusing (you'll notice you can interact with those things) but a common occurrence among bands to take Flash to a level it's not supposed to go.
.swf file. At least the browser will be able to show you something if you don't have the ability/desire to render it.
And I welcome it. Seriously, I'd rather have this be a well formed completely open standard in CSS and allow the creative types a way to vent and put tattoo or gothic or whatever font all over their page. At least I won't need a plugin. At least it won't be in some weird
I'm not going to start using this until everything's ironed out and your average web surfer finds it not only acceptable but desirable. But I still am excited that CSS and HTML are meeting needs. With IE6 soon dead, they are liberated.
People will abuse the tools you give them. If you don't believe me, go visit the graveyard that is Geocities. Doesn't stop the rest of us from using the tools in the way they were meant to be used. You might have an argument about this exacerbating the issue with these latest tools but I've always been one to promote unbridled liberation on the web.
Re:Oh the agony... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh C'Mon. It isn't that bad. Do you prefer Flash-laden sites?...I thought so.
At least with this option you will be able to:
1-Copy any rendered text
2-Download/view the source
3-Change the fonts for your viewing pleasure or prevent downloading them (with a little help of greasemonkey)
Exploits are an issue but they'll get fixed. Same concerns arouse with Flash, Java, etc and they are all still there.
Re:Oh the agony... (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you think you got those fat pipes to download more porn? You got it so webpages can be even more cluttered, bloated and web designers even more careless when loading their pages with useless junk.
It's a bit like machines getting faster so programmers don't have to optimize code.
Re:Self-downloading fonts... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bandwidth? Eek.
having to DOWNLOAD every font mentioned on a page?
Fonts are positively tiny compared to bitmap images of text rendered in the same font, which is what is being used now.
Seven million websites written in Comic Sans.
You can use Comic Sans now, because everybody has it. The new feature allows you to use fonts which are not as commonly installed. If the licensing issues can be solved, this opens the door for high quality typography on the web, instead of the same two fonts in the same two weights everywhere (and bitmaps where the available fonts don't fit. Btw, bitmaps don't adapt to the local rendering rules and scale badly).
Re:Hold on a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are security risks. And if this tech uses system font APIs, interfaces not normally subjected to the same security scrutiny as those of, say, images, then there will need to be some security code auditing.
I'm certain there will be a few exploit events before the situation settles down. But we can't stop the progress of useful functionality just because there might be some unknown security flaw. This an isn't ActiveX situation. Fonts do not contain executable code. A perfectly secure font reader should be relatively easy to write.
Re:cutting edge considerd harmfull (Score:3, Insightful)
Embeded font is there. Is unusable for a long period of time, maybe 5, maybe 10 years. Once the old browsers are forgothen and the new browsers dominate.
As long as your design degrades gracefully in browsers that don't support the new bells and whistles there is no problem using the latest and greatest. I don't see a problem from the user's point-of-view with giving people with the newest browser your "best" look and people with older browsers the "good enough" look.
Of course this may introduce a technical problem for you the designer because you might need to be extra careful to make sure you test that the design does indeed degrade gracefully - but that is the price you pay for playing close to the bleeding edge.
I can see this being *very* irritating if certain PHBs and corporate branding people catch wind of the new feature. First they'll demand to have the corporate font used for all pages, will be told that it will look different on older browsers (which they'll say "fine" to without actually taking in what is being said). Then a couple of weeks later they'll visit the site on Aunt Betty's old machine with IE6 and FF1.5 and demand that the site should look the same on all, and we'll be back to having sites that use images (or proprietary plugins) for all text just to get the fonts right...
Re:IE doesn't support font-face (Score:4, Insightful)
It's time to bring back the "get firefox" banners and link buttons on web sites, with a little blurb like this:
"Does this site look lousy in your browser? It's because of that abusive monopolist company Microsoft ignoring the standards everyone else in the Universe follows, all while claiming to embrace those standards. Upgrade to Firefox, Safari, or Opera now to get a browser which actually adheres to those standards."
Licensing nightmare? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
Why is font licensing any different from image licensing? The page directs you to (optionally) download font information. Your computer either does or does not. If it does, it uses the font information to render something on the page. As the server gave you this information when your computer asked for it, you legitimately have a copy. However, you are not allowed to redistribute this copy to a third party unless you have a license to do so, else you are in breach of copyright.
It's just a bunch more bits that you've downloaded off of a server. How are these bits any different from any other bits?
(Is there a missing href in the story?)
Re:Hold on a sec... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, how do you think those HTML pages, CSS sheets, JS files, images, and plugin files (flash,java,etc) work?
Download -> run trough interpreter -> render output
It depends on the interpreter. And I say that one is the same for any font, and therefore you could also use maybe an obscure Unicode character to wreak havoc in the interpreter. No matter what font it is.
Somehow I have the feeling that you do not understand how web pages work.
I would find it very useful (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one would find it very useful, for embedding things like sexagesimal numerals, e.g http://autonomyseries.com/autonomy-canon/community-standard-sexagesimal/ [autonomyseries.com] right now uses an aging wordpress plugin to display sexagesimal.ttf glyphs. Being able to embed "@font=sexagesimal.ttf" (or whatever the syntax is) would be very handy, but not if we're forced to convert our ttfs to Microsoft's worthless alternative format.
As for Microsoft's pathetic excuse that someone, somewhere might violate a copyright at some point in time my response is: so what? Just because someone, somewhere might violate someone's asinine copyright on a particular implementation of the alphabet's 26 letters, doesn't mean monopolists like Microsoft have any business throwing roadblocks in the way of the rest of us, who design our own fonts and want to be able to display and distribute them simply, seamlessly, and painlessly in standard, open formats. This isn't about protecting copyrights on fonts, its about Microsoft making sure IE isn't quite compatible with every other browser, and making sure we have to use their tools if we want anything to work on their dominant platform (and, if history is anything to judge by, eventually buy a license to do so). It's about muscling in on web standards to the detriment of everyone else, and I for one am fed up with it. I'm delighted Firefox, Opera, and Apple are embracing this. Hopefully they'll do the same with ogg-vorbis and other open standards, so we can have a complete web stack (including fonts and multimedia) that is unencumbered by American software patents, Microsoft (or anyone else's) proprietaryisms, sometimes-expensive licensing of third party products, and proprietary formats that only run on one or two widespread platforms.
Re:IE doesn't support font-face (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't get this (Score:3, Insightful)
In the '80s those of us not using English had a real problem with fonts in that we had no uniform way of having what we wrote appear on a screen or printer. I remember embedding printer control escape sequences that would back the print head up and then print a slash or tick over what was there so people could understand what letter it was. But even back then people were complaining about not having fancy fonts when there was this real problem. Remember font cartridges for printers?
Now the real problem is largely solved but these font weenies are still coming-up with crazy schemes to make text look a certain particular way and it is pretty ridiculous the amount of effort that has been spent over the years on this with schemes that end-up only working for a few short years before something new shows-up on the horizone when for the most part electronic text is about information rather than the appearance. Don't try and tell me that this is simple until you look up EOT.
Re:Fonts (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, somebody is grumpy...and ill informed.
Licensing? Resolvable. No different than "copyrighted" images and the licensing for them. Honest developers will use properly licensed material (fonts, images, etc), dishonest or uninformed developers won't care.
Bandwidth? At 50-100k they are not that much compared to swf files or large images previously used (also, you can cache them)
Security? Security patches will come as they arise. How is this different than any other "potential for abuse"?
Compatibility? Does degrade nicely, you can specify the web fonts but fall back to "traditional" fonts
Gains? Designers will have flexibility! They won't have to rely on images to produce "nice fonts" and the pages can be more semantic (text > images). This is just a few of the potential gains.
Do you really want to hold back progress because YOU think something is stupid and YOU would prefer no styling at all just standard html? Also, you do not have to "DOWNLOAD every font mentioned on a page", just the ones you want to specify, so get your facts straight before you jump to irrational conclusions. Get your morning coffee, relax and realize that this is progress even if you don't see the benefit in the implementation/execution.
So font face is dead, RIP (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly how Microsoft can stop progress of web and in fact, the entire progress in computer/software industry.
Once they don't support something or support it in a way that is impossible to implement in other platforms, that thing is dead.
Don't hold your breath for them to support a multi platform way of doing things. That is how every webmaster ended up using Flash for drop down menus and also the reason why they hate Flash enough to ship a 'me too' joke.
Re:Oh Lord! (Score:2, Insightful)
Terrible as in "I don't like it" or as in "there's something wrong with the page"? I'm just wondering, because I'm also using Firefox 3.5 and I think the page looks great; not only is it pretty, but it's also nicely readable.
Re:font of knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
If your content takes longer to load, you've degraded your content. This might be good for some pages, but for most it won't, and web designers seem to care more about how the page looks than what it's there for. 99% of the time this is used it will be used badly.