is..is that..Futura?!
Posted by admin on March 21st, 2007One of the biggest limitations of HTML web design is that internet browsers only support the fonts that the user has in his or her computer. That is why designers have to design with what we call “Web-safe fonts” in mind. Web-safe fonts includes: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet MS, Times New Roman, Times, and Georgia. If a designer uses a font in the HTML that a user does not have on the computer, it will default to one of the these web-safe fonts. This is problematic because it may jeopardize the entire layout design. One of the solution to this is to use rasterized images of fonts instead of using them as text in the html, that is why many headers on websites are often images.
A little while ago I came upon this nice little tool/technique called sIFR3b1 which is a combination of JavaScript, CSS, and Flash that lets you use any fonts on web pages regardless of whether or not the user has the same font installed. This gives the designers more freedom in designing and users faster load times.
Here are a few examples of sites using this technique:
http://www.909.be/newspage/1/ – the headers are created with sIFR3b1
http://www.konsepherba.com/ – all the headers
http://www.savilleconsulting.com/ – the heading
