In the past couple of years, web browsers have been evolving a lot. One of the exciting areas where things have been getting better is in the area of typography and using custom fonts. In the past, web developers were restricted to either using Arial, Georgia, and other boring fonts that we knew would be on users' machines, or embedding all text in images. Thankfully, now ALL modern browsers have the capabilities of supporting embedded custom fonts:
- Google Chrome: version 4.249.4+
- Mozilla Firefox: version: 3.5+
- Apple Safari: version 3.1+
- Opera: version 10.5+
- Microsoft Internet Explorer: version 6+
At FableVision Studios, we are very excited about this change and have been trying to incorporate web fonts into all of our web projects. There are, however, legal issues surrounding embedding "just any old font." Luckily, it's Google to the rescue! Google has a large (500+!) collection of fonts that are fully licensed to be used on the web. Designers and developers can download these fonts for use in creating websites.
You can browse and play with all of the Google Web Fonts here:
To be honest, there are still some crummy fonts in the Google Web Fonts, like this:
But, internet to the rescue once again! Check out the two site below for a good showcase of nice fonts:
Web Fonts are very easy to embed from a developer perspective, too. It's a 2-line change to the code! So from a design and developer perspective, Google web fonts are a Win-Win!
