Embedding Fonts

garvin

"Embedding Fonts" might not be the right term, but I've seen this before and heard of it being used before but this is my scenario:

I want to use a font as text on my site. However, its not a font that most computers come with. Its a freeware font that I picked up along the way and would rather not create graphics to use it on the site. How do you go about using a font on your site without forcing people to download it? I know you upload it to the server, but how to you call to it so people can see it without downloading it?

TomTester

Try googling for SIFR and SIFR 2 (note: not useful for anything but headlines) http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/ In the past Adobe had something that worked on IE which installed fonts. (Opentype?) That failed miserably, I believe because of the dangers of hacks and lack of support by other browsers for ActiveX (aka ActiveHacks) Some old instructions that might help you: http://www.spoono.com/html/tutorials/tutorial.php?id=19

jakob_r

Yep, siFR is probably the best way to go for that but you need flash to create the file with the font embedded. It's best for headlines not whole pages. Another Mark, Mark Wubben, holds the reins for siFR (Beta v3 here: sifr3)

As Tomtester says, WEFT is IE only and seldom seen.

There is also the option to create an image from a font using PHP and the GD-libs, but that's best if you don't have lots of text to produce. There's an old article on it at A List Apart.

TomTester

Personally I think that there is rarely a need for a different font for body copy. If you absolute must have special fonts I'd suggest Flash instead (for the whole site)...

dan39

sIFR is really only for headlines and subheadlines. It works best when used sparingly. I don't recommend it for discussion headlines. sIFR is the last thing to load on the page, so it gives the impression of a slow loading page because the text takes longer to appear. sIFR3 is supposed to improve this though, but the beta/alpha developement has not been moving swiftly.