¶ The availability of fonts for use on the Web, or more specifically the lack thereof, has been getting some welcome attention recently. First up, Andrei Herasimchuk has made an impassioned plea to John Warnock, CEO of Adobe, to release eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain. This is a fabulous idea and would be a most welcome move from a company that is owning an increasing amount of the Web design workflow.
Andrei goes on with an additional request; that is for Warnock to get Microsoft and Apple to include these core fonts in their respective operating systems. This request is by far the most important. The very purpose of having a lovely free set of fonts to specify is completely negated if these fonts are not distributed to a significant majority of personal computers across the world.
As Jeff Croft points out, Microsoft has a new set of typefaces waiting in the wings. Currently it seems these are tabled to appear only in Vista, whenever that eventually comes out. The new Vista fonts (the C-fonts as I like to call them) are pretty good, especially on-screen, and as such Jeff rightly pleads with Microsoft to distribute them to XP users (maybe with the IE7 update), and with Apple to license them from Microsoft. Perhaps including them with the next upgrade to Office on both operating systems would go some way to achieving distribution.
The holy grail
This is good stuff and, should it come to fruition, having another fifteen (or even just five) typefaces for body copy on the Web would be of great benefit to us all (as designers and end users). But it’s not exactly the holy grail. Earlier this year, that was brought back into discussion by Bert Bos, and is of course downloadable fonts.
Since the advent of CSS2, the syntax has been available:
@font-face {
font-family: "Swiss 721";
src: url("swiss721.pfr");
}And there were partial implementations with Microsoft’s WEFT which only worked in IE, and Bitstream which only worked in Netscape 4; these systems failed to take off. The only font embedding system for HTML pages that has had any traction at all is sIFR, a clever hack using JavaScript and Flash: Javascript to manipulate the webpage and Flash to provide the embedded font.
So Flash can happily embed fonts, as can PDF, and both are practically ubiquitous Web technologies. This implies that the technical and digital rights issues that are often mentioned as stumbling blocks have already been solved. What is left to do is work out a way of getting that technology into ordinary webpages, and given that we’re talking about Flash and PDF, it probably means we’re once again looking to Adobe for this.
What’s required is a tool to create the downloadable font (possibly derived from Acrobat or Flash) and a way of getting the font rendering into all browsers, so that browsers can use the @font-family construct. Now I realise perfectly well that the last point is non-trivial, but seems to me that Flash could be a useful vehicle for this, perhaps along the lines of building something akin to sIFR directly into Flash Player. What do you think? Is this utterly naive technically or politically? Or with some will is it actually feasible? I’d like to hear some sensible arguments as to why not – just imagine how good the outcome good be.
On the subject of typefaces, Cameron Moll recently published a list of typefaces no one gets fired for using, along with a call for your own suggestions. On a similar note, Dan Mall has listed “=fonts that you should get fired for using, or at least overused fonts that should be retired.
And finally, we must remember that typography is not all about fonts. A lot of good can be done with what we have to hand – I’d much rather see designers use Georgia well than use Warnock badly. And on that note, my long suffering Web Typography project progresses at a glacial pace, but progresses none-the-less. The latest instalment to Vertical Motion covers an oft-ignored typographical detail.
Comments
1
Thanks, this entry is definitely goodread-labeled IMO. Do you know if IE7’s gonna suppoert the src attribute for fonts? If so, that’d make things alot easier.
2
Gracias!!
Realmente no habia encontrado ningun articulo que hablara de esto tan especificamente. Hablaré de esto en mi blog… de nuevo gracias.
3
Great post, Rich. Typography seems to be a really popular topic right now among blogs, and I’m excited to see the types of challenges that other designers are proposing.
I’m really intrigued in your idea of building something like sIFR into the Flash player. I’m particularly interested in the legal aspect of that; would that be considered a bit more than derivative work and, therefore, a violation of copyright? I’ve heard good arguments for each side…
4
There is very little point in delivering this imprpvement throgh Flash; in part, as sIFR already exists and addresses the problem in that environment, in part as this is core tech any browser should have regardless of a Flash plugin, which for many valid reasons often is turned off, even when available.
WHAT-WG is the kind of environment where standards like this seem to form today (when no random consensus shows up by following a lead rabbit, which wasn’t successful with neither IE nor Netscape, as noted).
5
Dan – I didn’t really mean integrate a copy of sIFR into Flash, more a case of replicating its behaviour somehow. And yes it’s great that people are talking about Web typography again – hopefully some momentum can be built up and some changes initiated.
Johan – I agree that the desired behaviour should be core tech in any browser, rather than relying on a plugin. However the time it would take browser manufacturers to integrate such technology and then propagate the upgrades worldwide would be measured in years.
Uptake of Flash is much faster, and while a few techies may be turning off Flash for their own reasons, the vast majority of web users have Flash installed and running – for practical purposes it can be said to be ubiquitous. Coupled with Adobe’s unique position of also being a font foundry, Flash would seem a more viable place to look to get font embedding working.
6
Sorry Rich; I should have clarified. I didn’t mean sIFR copyright; I meant the copyright agreement of the typeface being used. Not sure why I assumed you’d make the connection :)
I guess it might go hand in hand with what Andrei is proposing. Perhaps Adobe could let designers use those typefaces by enabling them in some crazy way through Flash. That way they wouldn’t have to license the actual fonts, just the use of them. Maybe I’m being ridiculously naive too. Maybe.
7
Uptake of Flash may be fast only where it’s actually available.
I have this Linux box with AMD64 proc sitting right next to me that can’t use it.
8
sIFR – http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/ – does a really good job for such requirement.
9
GNU/Linux i386 is still trailing with its Flash 7 player
10
Linux folks: I know you guys are not up to date with Flash, and are probably more likely than others to remove it altogether, but in reality you’re in a significant minority. From a pragamatic point of view the vast majority of end users do have Flash installed and enabled, and still think it’s reasonable to say that Flash gets updated much quicker than browsers.
In this instance, I’m not worried about minorities, it’s all about the numbers game. If by some magic any of this happens, what I’ll be saying is something along the lines of “80% of users will see this font”. And if 80% get to see Frutiger and the rest see Arial, its wouldn’t exactly be a disaster.
Brajeshwar – sIFR does not do a good job for the requirements discussed here. sIFR is a clever hack for specifying headline fonts, but cannot be used (practically) for body copy.
Dan – the way I see it with typeface copyright, is that fonts are already being embedded in Flash movies and PDFs, so why would webpages be any different? Haven’t the rights issues already been solved for these media?
11
Sorry, but if Microsoft and Apple will apply every font, which is asked to be applied only directory fonts will be on 1 dvd
12
Jacquard – so am I to understand that you would rather see no fonts distributed then, or just the tiny number that are out there now?
13
A note on the latest update to the Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web:
The bit about leading/line-height for sidenotes strikes me as not at all in the spirit of Bringhurst, who deliberately does not force the baselines of the sidenotes to line up with the baselines of the main text. I know he never gives an explicit reason for or against this, but I think his choice is valid. The smaller size merits a smaller line-height to maintain an even color.
14
Alex – interesting point you make. I’m not sure about the sitenotes leading issue not being in the spirit, but either way I felt it was useful to show it as an example.
15
Odd seeing such a nice article on webfonts, on a page whose section headers and byline dates are in fonts all broken up (missing pixels etc). Doesn’t exactly add credence to the article…
16
Robb – the page looks fine on all the machines I’ve tested it on. What OS/browser are you using? Please could you send me a screen shot so I can see what you’re seeing?
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