On 3 Oct 2011, 10:39 am, sonjanna wrote:
Thank you David!
I know caxton, but it is still in beta and I like to use a more reliable method. – Actionsworld says: „Not all browsers will work with this. There will also be differences between font rendering between OSes, and these can cause text to flow differently."
This will be true of Google’s offering as well. The stark reality is that right now, there are a number of methods that allow you to embed fonts. There are (just to add confusion and headache) a number of varying file formats supported for embedded fonts. If you want to hit as many browsers as you want, you need to offer up a .ttf, a .woff, an .eot, a .svg, and possibly others. The font kits from Font Squirrel target older browsers as well as the more recent ones by offering up a wider selection of files to download. I think Google only supplies the .ttf files - so only more recent browsers will work with them.
I’ll also explain the “There will also be differences between font rendering between OSes, and these can cause text to flow differently” part. This isn‘t down to the files that Caxton supports - this applies to any font - even the so called “web safe” set. Much has been written about how Macs render fonts on screen versus how Window does it. I’ll summarise. Macs render the fonts according to the metrics. This can result in more anti-alisaing, as it is inevitable that horizontals and verticals will cross pixel boundaries. Anti aliasing attempts to cover this up. In contrast, Windows actively re-jigs each glyph so that when it is drawn, horizontals and verticals fall within pixel boundaries. In short - it redesigns the font on the fly. This can result in a sharper looking screen rendering, but at the same time it will distort and damage the look of the font, especially at smaller sizes.
Such differences can affect the way a font falls on a page. It may be that there is negligible difference, but it you take a Mac as the standard, then Windows can affect the width of each glyph and this will eventually cause text to reflow.
Some of the fonts in the “web safe” set are pretty much bullet proof. Trebuchet and Verdana, for example, have been designed to work small on screen, so won’t have redraw and overrun problems in Windows. Fonts which have not had this kind of work done to it are more susceptible to massaging.
Hope this is useful to you.
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