pretty type... on the tinternets
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- ShaneHolley
Have you guys got work around for embedding a font without generating an image. I was looking at using the WEFT method but as I've not used it before I just wondered if you guys have and if it's worth looking at?
- Nairn0
I vaguely recall that from a while back. Given that it was started in '97 and doesn't appear to be used ANYWHERE, I'd not bother with it.
If you've not already checked it out, look into sIFR, though I stopped using it as I got fed up with having to fix sites every time a new browser/version of sIFR came out. Possibly more to do with my lacklustre attempts at integration, rather than the tech itself though.
- Nairn0
Also, it appears to be an IE-specific mod. Certainly doesn't work out of the tin on Firefox and Chrome.
- ah my bad... I didn't check it on Chrome.. bizarrelyShaneHolley
- ShaneHolley0
Yeah I looked into that, but cheers.
Well yeah I've always been curious about WEFT as it was kind dismissed back around ie4 but browsers have moved on a hell of a lot and I'm just curious why it's not been picked up as all the demos seem to work great on modern browsers. Confuses me so it does!
- Perhaps because its MS and people wanted to use something that wasn't platform specific?shitehawke
- Stugoo0
this type of thing is making a comeback... the new firefox (released today [apparently]) is meant to support this....
http://craigmod.com/journal/font…with more and more poeple looking at it as an alternative... the ie only mod has been about for years but this is certianly being revisited.
- thatboyneave0
If you don't get anywhere with that Cufon works nicely, we have used it on a couple of sites. http://cufon.shoqolate.com/gener…
It doesn't use flash or images and the text is selectable in IE.
- shitehawke0
Cufon seems pretty decent, using it in a project meself at the mo. Text doesn't seem to be scalable though when you increase the point size in the browser. Or am I missing something?
- If you load the page with the font size already bumped up, Cufon renders it at the increased size. It scales on the fly in FF3.thatboyneave
- Ah I see, so changing it outside of FF3 has no effect but if its set to 'large' or whatever it renders as such? Cheers!shitehawke
- Yeah just tried that in Safari, can't speak for IE though as I don't have a PC to hand.thatboyneave
- Hey shitehawke, were you able to use hovers when using Cufon?ShaneHolley
- lukus_W0
I've been reading the discussion about this on the (and ) mailing lists. There's been quite a lot of activity lately about the future of fonts on the web.
Basically it seems that four major browsers manufacturers are happy to roll out new versions of their apps with the '@font-face' method (which Stugoo links to above).
The font foundries themselves are not happy with this because it might make it easy for users to steal fonts. Microsoft won't use it because the font foundries object - and they've been championing their own format (EOT) for sometime now. (The WEFT stuff you link to, is an early implementation of this). They submitted the idea as freebie to the W3C but I afaik it was turned down.
So right now, there are a load of people arguing about a possible solution (three main camps .. the open-source brigade, Microsoft, and some reps from some of the major font-foundries).
The battle seems to revolve around how to appease the font foundries. (e.g. the font companies don't want people visiting cnn.com and stealing fonts from their computer's temp directory).
Lots of different methods have been suggested - most try to deal with the problem by either obfuscation or compression. So font-files would either be placed in some-kind of wrapper (e.g. EOT) or compressed using some kind of proprietary format (Monotype wants their own format MXT to be used), or maybe changing the font-file's meta-data in some obscure way which would make the font unusable in desktop applications.
I reckon the main problem is that the argument is philosophical as well as practical. Microsoft are closed-source and don't like co-operating and giving away their code... the open-source guys are religiously opposed to Microsoft's stance and the font-foundries ideally want to implement DRM for fonts which is as a daft as King Canute trying to turn back the tide.
While there are doubtlessly better ways to spend time, it's been pretty interesting following these developments. I had no idea how these things were decided before I joined these w3.org mailing lists... now I can see just how tortuous the process is.
And right now they're all very very pissed off.
- ShaneHolley0
Cheers for the comments on this guys. been really helpful! Going down the Cufon route.