Now is the time of @font-face
by Jonathan on 30th Nov 2009 in CSS
Up until a few days ago I didn’t give the @font-face part of CSS a second thought, but I think I may be about to give it another look. For anyone who doesn’t know, it allows you to use fonts stored on the web server in your web pages rather than having to rely on the visitor having the font installed on their machine.
The reason I’ve never bothered with it is twofold. Firstly I’m quite happy with arial, verdana and georgia, and using the odd bit of image replacement when I need something fancier. Secondly, creating the correct format of font file for IE (EOT) is a pain. I tried it once and the application microsoft provides for the purpose, WEFT, either crashed or just plain didn’t work.
But now I’ve started to think about using it, because I came across a free font site called Font Squirrel. Not only do they have a huge range of 100% free for commercial use fonts, but they package a lot of them up ready for use on the web.
Simply download a ZIP file containing all the font formats you’ll need, ttf, otf, svg, eot etc. and even a sample html and css file to help you use them – it’s a great idea and I’d like to see all font makers providing similar resources to their users.
I’ll be giving it a go soon on the design I’m currently doing for this site, so keep an eye out for the new look!
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About the author
Jonathan Phillips is the founder and main author here on Division by Zero. A PHP developer by trade, Jonathan spends his days building and marketing websites at his company, Phillips Internet Limited and the rest of the time coming up with ideas for websites and businesses he hasn't got time to implement.
