Gone are the days where GD and ImageMagick were the tools of choice to render text dynamically. I started to use my own php scripts in 2002 and used them up to 05. Menus only. Headlines of certain length only.
Remember Mike Davidsons sIFR? That was amazing! And it happened in 2005 which in terms of web development is Cambrian.
Unfortunately, if you were sitting on Linux, like me, where flashplugin was bit of a hack to get running, it was a blind flight. sIFR2 and sIFR3 improved that technique a lot, but without that flash plugin it was a nogo anyways.
In 2008, typeface.js offered an js canvas drawing solution. Font do look quite differently on different browsers unfortunately.
Since then I lost track a little bit. There are proprietary services like typekit, or open source solutions like cufon, conceived as an alternative to sIFR. But with HTML5, CSS3 and the like on the verge of becoming real I didn’t feel like trying those and spend days on debugging Internet Explorer 6 compatibility issues.
Now in 2009, snook wrote an article that shows how to become a font embedding master. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it until now and here, but today I gave it a try and use DejaVu @font-face embedded! BTW, jon tangerine has written about the history of web fonts.
Looks really good, even on my Linux machine, supports all browsers, except IE6 I think and doesn’t hurt :]
If you need fonts for embedding, webfonts is a good start. And if you allready know what you want, you can use the free service over at the online font converter, to get your *.ttf converted to *eot, *.otf, *.woff and *.svg.
Update: I just recognised and confirmed that Opera 10 is buggy with @font-face unfortunately.
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The rendering issue, at least at text sizes, is not going to go away anytime soon. As it’s been pointed out, the naivety of some designers, coupled with the marketing motivations of webfont services and distributors, does not bode well for the readership. The bandwagon has left, with everyone on board, but not realizing it’s missing a wheel, this is very useful to us, we really enjoy to this post..