funny thing: I used it in the middle ages of internet (around 2000) quite often... now I'm in business and embedding licensed webfonts and tell customer "whoa, new, must have!" (and tell them truth some seconds later)
What defers me from TypeKit and Google Font API is one simple thing. No fonts with subsets other than Latin-1. Looks like both TypeKit and Google Fonts API team are ignoring the rest of the world.
My workflow is full of creating bilingual sites. TypeKit and Google Fonts API are nice concepts, but they are very far from the real business needs. Especially in Europe, not to say about the Far East.
@liam: clear-type makes stuff more beautiful and less readable (imho). When it comes down to this, I'd go with readable :) Also there are versions of Windows shipped with clear-type off (mostly XP but I don't know about Vista and 7) and most users don't know about it.
Well, if it was up to me, I would handle anti-alias stuff by css. Actually, webkit is doing something like that: http://maxvoltar.com/archive/-webkit-font-smoothing
Liam - 14 years ago
@Ian: But with these third parties you don't get to use the font in any other way but embedding into a website. If I own the font itself I can use it in any medium I desire, including embedding if the license allows it (This is generally a requirement of my font usage with web design now). I don't want to have to buy that font from somewhere else if I would like to use it in some print work, or designing a logo etc
Personally (I'm positive I'm not the only one) I use free & open source fonts a lot more then I use commercial fonts, also you can find many free fonts on typekit, but would need to pay to have access to them, when you could goto fontsquirrel and get it there with no charge.
Just how often would you decide to change a font on an already completed design anyways? Especially to a font that you haven't used before (if you need to buy a license to use it I assume you haven't used it before).
I can see these services growing in the future to something I would like to use, but until they offer more then just automating what I can do myself I do not see a large enough benefit to hand over control to them.
@Recep: Why would you have clear-type turned off at all?
If you "must" use @font-face, please don't forget about people like me, who are browsing your site on a Windows with clear-type set off. Those wonderful sites you see on your Mac os Safari are complete disasters on my screen. I haven't tried yet but this might come in handy: http://gist.github.com/283689
Not buying the actual font has its own disadvantages in terms of price. With Typekit, if you decide to change the font used on your site, you don't need to pay any more money, you just click a few buttons and voila. If I wanted to do the same thing with Fontspring I'd be buying a new license each time for a new typeface. Not only that, but for $50/yr with Typekit you can use an UNLIMITED numbers of fonts on an UNLIMITED numbers of domains.
Liam - 14 years ago
Since the fonts on fontsquirrel are all licensed for @font-face use I'd say that takes care of the licenseing, same with fontspring. I also believe fontspring has a much wider collection of fonts on offer then typekit, as does fontsquirrel, and the fonts on fontsquirrel are completely free.
Typekit using the subscription model is quite nice giving you access to all the fonts, but you can't be 100% sure it will always be there to be used and you continue to pay for those fonts for as long as you subscribe. With a one of payment you keep full control of what is served on your sites, you can use the font forever without needing to continually pay someone.
I see there are benefits to using a third party, but I feel they are too small, and you loose too much to make it worth while to not just do it yourself.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Fontsquirrel was a collection of free fonts, and Fontspring was a place to buy fonts that can be used with @font-face. Both of those options are just fine, if you can find the font you want, but it's hardly taking care of licensing.
Typekit, for example, has a larger selection of premium fonts from some of the best foundries, that would be unavailable online without their licensing. Not to mention, a flat yearly fee to use unlimited fonts from these foundries is far more reasonable than buying each one. It still allows you to use your own CSS, the only difference is in the location of the font file.
Just so we're clear, I'm not advocating a specific service or way of doing things (I don't use @font-face in the wild just yet), but third party services have their place.
What Liam says its true, not hard at all to find nice fonts free to use and easy to set up. I've been using fontsquirrel for a few, just need to be careful picking the fonts to use, but it works flawlessly. But now i will sure give a try to the Google Fonts API.
Liam - 14 years ago
that should be fontspring
Liam - 14 years ago
@Evan: What, like fontsquirrel or fontsprint? Both of these take care of the license stuff, you just need to setup your own css, or even better, let fontsquirrel generate it for you.
This way you get to keep control over what happens on your site.
@Liam: You just answered yourself. A third party takes care of the licensing for you, so you can use premium fonts that would be unavailable for online use otherwise.
Luis Craik - 14 years ago
No, I will not use it in my future projects. At least for now, we should give it time to improve. We'll see in the future.
Liam - 14 years ago
Why not just use @font-face yourself, why rely on a third party when it's just native CSS.
It's really not hard to find font-s with a embedding friendly license.
funny thing: I used it in the middle ages of internet (around 2000) quite often... now I'm in business and embedding licensed webfonts and tell customer "whoa, new, must have!" (and tell them truth some seconds later)
What defers me from TypeKit and Google Font API is one simple thing. No fonts with subsets other than Latin-1. Looks like both TypeKit and Google Fonts API team are ignoring the rest of the world.
My workflow is full of creating bilingual sites. TypeKit and Google Fonts API are nice concepts, but they are very far from the real business needs. Especially in Europe, not to say about the Far East.
@liam: clear-type makes stuff more beautiful and less readable (imho). When it comes down to this, I'd go with readable :) Also there are versions of Windows shipped with clear-type off (mostly XP but I don't know about Vista and 7) and most users don't know about it.
Well, if it was up to me, I would handle anti-alias stuff by css. Actually, webkit is doing something like that: http://maxvoltar.com/archive/-webkit-font-smoothing
@Ian: But with these third parties you don't get to use the font in any other way but embedding into a website. If I own the font itself I can use it in any medium I desire, including embedding if the license allows it (This is generally a requirement of my font usage with web design now). I don't want to have to buy that font from somewhere else if I would like to use it in some print work, or designing a logo etc
Personally (I'm positive I'm not the only one) I use free & open source fonts a lot more then I use commercial fonts, also you can find many free fonts on typekit, but would need to pay to have access to them, when you could goto fontsquirrel and get it there with no charge.
Just how often would you decide to change a font on an already completed design anyways? Especially to a font that you haven't used before (if you need to buy a license to use it I assume you haven't used it before).
I can see these services growing in the future to something I would like to use, but until they offer more then just automating what I can do myself I do not see a large enough benefit to hand over control to them.
@Recep: Why would you have clear-type turned off at all?
If you "must" use @font-face, please don't forget about people like me, who are browsing your site on a Windows with clear-type set off. Those wonderful sites you see on your Mac os Safari are complete disasters on my screen. I haven't tried yet but this might come in handy: http://gist.github.com/283689
Not buying the actual font has its own disadvantages in terms of price. With Typekit, if you decide to change the font used on your site, you don't need to pay any more money, you just click a few buttons and voila. If I wanted to do the same thing with Fontspring I'd be buying a new license each time for a new typeface. Not only that, but for $50/yr with Typekit you can use an UNLIMITED numbers of fonts on an UNLIMITED numbers of domains.
Since the fonts on fontsquirrel are all licensed for @font-face use I'd say that takes care of the licenseing, same with fontspring. I also believe fontspring has a much wider collection of fonts on offer then typekit, as does fontsquirrel, and the fonts on fontsquirrel are completely free.
Typekit using the subscription model is quite nice giving you access to all the fonts, but you can't be 100% sure it will always be there to be used and you continue to pay for those fonts for as long as you subscribe. With a one of payment you keep full control of what is served on your sites, you can use the font forever without needing to continually pay someone.
I see there are benefits to using a third party, but I feel they are too small, and you loose too much to make it worth while to not just do it yourself.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Fontsquirrel was a collection of free fonts, and Fontspring was a place to buy fonts that can be used with @font-face. Both of those options are just fine, if you can find the font you want, but it's hardly taking care of licensing.
Typekit, for example, has a larger selection of premium fonts from some of the best foundries, that would be unavailable online without their licensing. Not to mention, a flat yearly fee to use unlimited fonts from these foundries is far more reasonable than buying each one. It still allows you to use your own CSS, the only difference is in the location of the font file.
Just so we're clear, I'm not advocating a specific service or way of doing things (I don't use @font-face in the wild just yet), but third party services have their place.
What Liam says its true, not hard at all to find nice fonts free to use and easy to set up. I've been using fontsquirrel for a few, just need to be careful picking the fonts to use, but it works flawlessly. But now i will sure give a try to the Google Fonts API.
that should be fontspring
@Evan: What, like fontsquirrel or fontsprint? Both of these take care of the license stuff, you just need to setup your own css, or even better, let fontsquirrel generate it for you.
This way you get to keep control over what happens on your site.
Couldn't agree more with Liam.
@Liam: You just answered yourself. A third party takes care of the licensing for you, so you can use premium fonts that would be unavailable for online use otherwise.
No, I will not use it in my future projects. At least for now, we should give it time to improve. We'll see in the future.
Why not just use @font-face yourself, why rely on a third party when it's just native CSS.
It's really not hard to find font-s with a embedding friendly license.