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Thread: Lack of fonts on the web

  1. #1
    Moonlight shadow asheep_uk's Avatar
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    Lack of fonts on the web

    Anybody else bored of seeing Arial, Helvetica, Georgia and Verdana?

  2. #2
    Flashkit historian Frets's Avatar
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    Compatibility crisis.
    The MS embedded font thing never took off.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Genesis F5's Avatar
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    Arial is one of my favorite fonts next to Courier New (for its equal spacing). Too many fonts creates a mess when they're in the hands of a designer that needs to use all of them at once. Bold, italic, and underscore is enough variety for me.

  4. #4
    Always Twirling Toward Freedom pooon's Avatar
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    One day there'll be a resurgence of comic sans. Then what will you do.

  5. #5
    supervillain gerbick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frets View Post
    Compatibility crisis.
    The MS embedded font thing never took off.
    MS Weft was doomed the moment they tied it into ActiveX. The *.eot embedded format would have been a binary way to get fonts out there that were only machine readable...

    Sifr is great, but rendering an entire page/pages is too costly CPU-wise.

    Flash... it works, but SEO is still lost to it.

    And CSS3, they've yet to get everybody onboard for embedded fonts - which, to me would be the best way to get the type out there, but also the quickest way to get pay-for fonts in everybody hands.

    And if Comic Sans makes a comeback, I'll be on CNN holding up whatever type foundry created that abomination.

    [ Hello ] | [ gerbick ] | [ Ω ]

  6. #6
    Total Universe Mod jAQUAN's Avatar
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    Very few fonts work well with large blocks of text so for those cases, I have no problem with the current selection. I hate that Arial has a place that Helvetica deserved.
    Titles are the only place I'd really like to see some variation but I don't think it's worth creating a new tech just to handle it. alt attributes do enough of the seo job should I resort to images or sifr.

  7. #7
    Hood Rich FlashLackey's Avatar
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    There's only so much that can be done with typography that is designed to scale down to 8-10 pt and remain easy on the eyes to read.
    "We don't estimate speeches." - CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

  8. #8
    Total Universe Mod jAQUAN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FlashLackey View Post
    There's only so much that can be done with typography that is designed to scale down to 8-10 pt and remain easy on the eyes to read.
    death to pixel fonts

  9. #9
    poet and narcisist argonauta's Avatar
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    i love pixel fonts, they are cute, but you have to know when and where to use them
    my blog: blog.innocuo
    Sponsored by your mom.

  10. #10
    Moonlight shadow asheep_uk's Avatar
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    Think about how many books you read with so many different fonts. All perfectly legible. The rendering on Windows XP is pretty ****, yes, but Vista's getting there. I just wish there were a few more fonts to make things a little more interesting.

  11. #11
    Hood Rich FlashLackey's Avatar
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    Books, what are those?

    I imagine it just has to do with trying to have a balance between not supporting too many fonts that would make implementations cumbersome and covering style variations. imo, it's a decent balance since the variations in between are pretty subtle at "reading sizes."
    "We don't estimate speeches." - CBO Director Doug Elmendorf

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