What are all the probable pitfalls of attempting to embed my own fonts in my website?
October 3, 2011 3:28 PM Subscribe
What are all the probable pitfalls of attempting to embed my own fonts in my website?
I am using a mix now of Google Fonts and Typekit to achieve the look I want on my site but
A. its still not quite what I want and
B. I have to use both since Typekit doesnt want to work on all the tags I assign it for some reason.
Poking around I have found that I can embed my own fonts, although it is a bit of a process to do so. That's fine as its really only two typefaces I want to do this with. Theres also something called typeface.js that looks promising as well.
Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with embedding their own custom typefaces?
I've read stories of some browsers prompting warnings from it, since its technically a download.
Any tips or tricks that have worked well aside from these?
I am using a mix now of Google Fonts and Typekit to achieve the look I want on my site but
A. its still not quite what I want and
B. I have to use both since Typekit doesnt want to work on all the tags I assign it for some reason.
Poking around I have found that I can embed my own fonts, although it is a bit of a process to do so. That's fine as its really only two typefaces I want to do this with. Theres also something called typeface.js that looks promising as well.
Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with embedding their own custom typefaces?
I've read stories of some browsers prompting warnings from it, since its technically a download.
Any tips or tricks that have worked well aside from these?
I have had nothing but positive experiences embedding my own fonts. The @font-face declaration is practically cookie-cutter at this point and even supports IE6 (and IE5?). The only issue is that not all OS-browser combinations are equally good at rendering fonts, even though they all display the fonts, so testing is required. Nobody should be receiving any browser warnings unless they have unusual settings.
I recommend starting out by trying free @font-face kits from FontSquirrel (they even let you upload a font and create the font file types you need for complete browser coverage.)
posted by michaelh at 3:35 PM on October 3, 2011 [2 favorites]
I recommend starting out by trying free @font-face kits from FontSquirrel (they even let you upload a font and create the font file types you need for complete browser coverage.)
posted by michaelh at 3:35 PM on October 3, 2011 [2 favorites]
How large are the fonts that you want to embed? Do you have the rights to do this?
posted by The Lamplighter at 3:38 PM on October 3, 2011
posted by The Lamplighter at 3:38 PM on October 3, 2011
Response by poster: These are both freeware fonts under 25k so Im not sure why I wouldnt be able to.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 3:41 PM on October 3, 2011
posted by Senor Cardgage at 3:41 PM on October 3, 2011
I think your problem will be feedback: people rarely give any. They will just leave.
The set of font families available to everyone's computer's browser/smartphone/toaster is the result of typographers choosing what would work. I'm guessing that you're not a typographer, so will forget some of the stuff they didn't. i.e. that wont work at small/big sizes, certain groups of people will/won't be able to read that, that does/doesn't work well on a screen, etc. etc.
posted by devnull at 10:26 PM on October 3, 2011
The set of font families available to everyone's computer's browser/smartphone/toaster is the result of typographers choosing what would work. I'm guessing that you're not a typographer, so will forget some of the stuff they didn't. i.e. that wont work at small/big sizes, certain groups of people will/won't be able to read that, that does/doesn't work well on a screen, etc. etc.
posted by devnull at 10:26 PM on October 3, 2011
As long as you are hosting a complete set of formats (.ttf, .eof, .woff, .svg) there should be no problems on your end. As has been noted, not all browsers or platforms render fonts the same way, but this would be an issue if you were using remote-hosted fonts, too.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2011
posted by Thorzdad at 8:00 AM on October 4, 2011
Response by poster: I should note that this is merely for headers and such.
And yes, I am a skilled typographer.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 10:50 AM on October 4, 2011
And yes, I am a skilled typographer.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 10:50 AM on October 4, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by The Lamplighter at 3:30 PM on October 3, 2011