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Ivan's picture

The changing typography of the Web

Ivan | Thu, 2010-05-06 01:37
Webdev
Intermediate

Since the World Wide Web’s earliest days, whether you were shopping on Amazon or researching on Google or catching up on news at latimes.com, chances are you were looking at just one of four typefaces -- Arial, Verdana, Georgia or Times -- each formulated for computer monitors and trusted by web designers to display properly on your screen.

In other words, a seventh-grader writing a book report on Microsoft Word had more font choices than the person designing Esquire Magazine's website or the IKEA online catalog. But now that is about to change.

Beginning Tuesday, Monotype Imaging, a Massachusetts company that owns one of the largest collections of typefaces in the world, is making 2,000 of its fonts available to web designers. The move follows the San Francisco-based FontShop, which put several hundred of its fonts online in February. In just a few weeks, Font Bureau, a Boston designer of fonts, will make some of its typefaces available online as well.

Web designers, understandably, cannot overstate how big of a deal this is. Read further on LA Times.

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steveballmer's picture
627 pencils
steveballmer | Fri, 2010-05-07 01:36

Renders best on IE9!

—

http://stevefakeballmer.wordpress.com/
I am not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be me!

Jimmer's picture
9 pencils
Jimmer | Fri, 2010-05-07 13:21

All this is really exciting BUT:

at webfonts.fonts.com, there's a catch: advertising.

It's in the FAQs:

"With a Trial Tier License, you agree to place a line of Javascript on each Web page on your Web sites that uses or accesses Web Font software which will enable the Fonts.com Web font service and cause an ad unit to be placed on each Web page, with the formatting and content of such ad unit to be determined by Monotype Imaging in its sole discretion."

That little line of Javascript lets them put whatever they want on the web page it's attached to.

Ivan's picture
Ivan | Sun, 2010-05-09 00:52

Yeah, that's crazy, but you get what you pay for. :)

steveballmer's picture
627 pencils
steveballmer | Sun, 2010-05-09 17:52

Stop being soooo paranoid!

—

http://stevefakeballmer.wordpress.com/
I am not Steve Ballmer pretending not to be me!

Ivan's picture
Ivan | Thu, 2010-05-20 00:55

Google is behind this as well:
http://code.google.com/webfonts

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