HTML fonts

[webboy1]

Obviously there are standard fonts within the dreamweaver package that seem to work on all machines. However, if i were to edit the font list and add some sort of handscript font face, would it show up the same on all users PC's, or would they have to have that font installed on there system?

regards

webboy

[LeClair]

They have to have the font installed.

[joshie76]

You can actually embed fonts that you want to use into a HTML page:

[hotwired.lycos.com...]

Beware though - it adds significantly to the download and you need to be sure you're not infiringing any copyright on the fonts you are embedding. I haven't seen a website that uses embedded fonts for some time mind. Anybody out there using it that can advise of the pros and cons?

[LeClair]

Embedding fonts is a pain in the a*. There are two standards for Netscape and Microsoft and it was very time consuming to get it working properly when I tried it about a year ago.

The page you request downloads the font which takes time. The page is then displayed with a standard font and then refreshes itself with the embedded font. So every time you call such a page, it refreshes itself after downloaded.

Itīs not 100% save, the refreshing is annoying, too much trouble.
I would stick to Arial :)

[mbauser2]

My personal homepage (listed in my profile) uses Microsoft's Embedded Opentype fonts. It use 2 .eot files of 13752 byte each, so the effect on display speed is comparable to a couple of banner advertisments. As with CSS files, caching of .eot files (and being able to use really clean HTML) should make up the speed difference as people traverse a site.

I'm not necessarily a good example, though, because I got lazy and included a full character set in each .eot file. If I had only embedded the characters I actually used, the .eot files would be smaller. I just don't want to have to rerun the font software everytime I change a header or add a page.

I only use embedded fonts for headers; using embedded fonts more often would be rough because MS's EOT method needs a separate .eot file for each combination of font-weight and font-style, meaning a whole extra file if you italicize or boldface something. That'll add up fast.

[joshie76]

The extra weight can also be countered by the fact that you don't have to use images... to achieve that look you have on your homepage you would have to have a lot of different gifs for each title etc.

[T Suresh Babu]

To use a uncommon fonts or new fonts we should use embedding technology.

IE follows separate technology,
NS follows a separate one.

For IE .eot file is required.(Should be created using WEFT tool)
For NS .pfr file is required.(Should be created using Portable Font Reader Software)

[gethan]

Where are WEFT tool and Portable Font Reader Software availabe is it freeware? Do they support translation of True Type to their own format? (I can see many copyright problems to follow ;))

[LeClair]

I thought about joshie76īs post regarding page weight compared to using gifs.

I think it depends on the amount of the text you indent to use the embedded font for.
In the case of mbauser2īs homepage would the page be smaller with gif images (and faster loading).

maybe this link is of interest: [truedoc.com...]

[LeClair]

I have to add something to my very first post.

The refresh of the page only occurs with Netscape and only the first time the embedded font file is downloaded. On following pages its used out of the cache I guess.

[txbakers]

I would think that images overall would be better than embedded fonts since you could cache the image. It would download once and just reference the cache.

It seems that the font would need to be embedded on every page.

[mbauser2]

Microsoft's freeware WEFT is here: [microsoft.com...]

I can no longer find the Hexmac software for creating .pfr files. (In fact, I can't even find Hexmac the company anymore.) As I recall, it cost $200, although a demo version was available.