Preserved Topic: download a font set to a users PC to view web page in that font

This is a bit of a tngle I'm in, I've made a web page in a specific font(note specific this excludes typical default font sets on most browsers), I want that the clients browser should detect for the fonts availability and if it isn't available it should prompt the user to download the font that the page is displayed in. Any ideas on how to do that

sorry, but nope.

You could friendly ask the user te be kind and if he/she wants to download the fonts. Put some detailed instructions with it what to do with the fonts.

But in genereal it's bad practise to develop an sit with one specfic type of font. You should specify the fonts from specific to general.
Like so:
bla {font: special-type, common type, general type}
For instance when i use "impact" as font type which has no serif i could specify it like this:
bla {font: impact, arial, helevetica, sans-serif}
So when a user has the impact font type it will show on the site, if not arial is the first choice, followed by helvetica. If however the user has none of the specified font-types installed his browser will choose the general sans-serif font used by the system it runs on.

The trick in this matter is to make a design which looks good or is at least usable when showed in all the different font types mentioned above.

Once more the big difference between designing for web with designing for print is control. When designing for print you can have control over, content and layout, colors, fontype and whatever you call it. It's all going to be fixed. When you want something different you should rededign and print again.
When designing for web the only thing you can control in a fixed way is the content you write yourself.
For all the rest you could only suggest how you would like it. Yes you could specify colors, layout, fonts etc.
But the user can always overide these suggestions. For instance if the user like to view an website in an 400X400 pixel window, it could screw your 1024*768 layout. Or when the user is has bad eyesight and sets his browser to show the background as black and text as white for better contrast it could screw your grey logo.
Or the user could use an text browser, all your image-links will be worthless.

So the conclusion should be: A good designed website is flexible.

Clearly an too specific font-type is not.

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Do something usefull: support Justice for Pat Richard

I'm afraid being able to embded fonts or download them to someone's computer was soemthing that was toyed with some years ago but rejected. It seemed like a good diea but it would have led to an awful lot of bloated sites.

I would suggest take a step back up the planning/design stages and seeing if this is really necessary.

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org | Justice for Pat Richard | FAQs: Emperor | Site Reviews | Reception Room

This wasn't ur intention (I hope), but I'd just like to point out another problem with this possbility other than bloated sites. All of us here being computer genii, I guess most of us know that the xbox has been hacked. One of the possble hacks is based on an exploit in the font loading system in the xbox, allowing a buffer overflow and, from there, arbitrary code to be run. Being an MS console with MS software therefore, could a similar exploit exist in windows? I doubt it, but I suppose it's possible.
And to anyone who might be wondering the possibilities presented by buffer overflows: go ask valve about their potential

Wrayal

Go to kimber-ja.demon.co.uk and click on the link to the raytracer!

Ofcourse if you think the font is an improvement to the site you could try and persuade the user to download the font and install it in his system.

you could add something like this:

"For an better experience of this site download <font-name here>.zip now."

Do some research an put an little text file with it where you could describe in how the font should be installed.
When you want to do it really right you should incorparate descriptions for win2k/XP, win98(se), mac, linux and freebsd. Also you should use an font that could be used on all these sytems.

<edit>fat fingers</edit>
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Do something usefull: support Justice for Pat Richard

(Edited by Rinswind 2th on 05-17-2004 18:50)

You can download and install fonts "on-the-fly" as I understand (I toyed with it a few years ago) in IE, with Microsoft's WEFT (Windows Embedded Font Tool.)

Basically it creates .EOT files (effectively fonts) which are then referenced by CSS.
I really don't recommend this kind of stuff as it's microsoft-only proprietary business, but it can be done.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/default.htm

There are some limitations with WEFT also, ie. you can't embed certain fonts if their designers designed not to allow them to be installed on-the-fly, you have to also specify what domains the EOT files will "work" on, etc.

I think future versions of CSS will allow for font embedding "natively" (ie. referencing a .TTF file directly from CSS), but don't quote me on that.

(Edited by Scott on 05-22-2004 23:00)

Hmmm. I *KNOW* I've seen this done before. Can't recall if it was using WEFT or not. But I have seen it done. I've got it bookmarked, but don't have access to those bookmarks right now.

I've always thought that that was one thing that CSS was really lacking in.

Besides WEFT there was also Bitstream's TrueDoc - this required a convertor to make the .PFR font resources. I haven't seen either WEFT or TrueDoc used for some time.

Carl.