Just noticed that FontFont are now selling fonts with a licensing agreement for hosting on your own site and serving up via @font-face – the licensing is based on average page impressions per licensed domain, and the pack you download contains both WOFF and EOT formats. This means at present these would just be supported in IE and Firefox.
Archive for the fonts tag
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Web licensing direct from FontFont
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FontShop are now selling webfonts directly
Just noticed this announcement today from FontShop – they are now selling font files in EOT / WOFF format directly along with a suitable licensing model. FontShop have been very progressive in supporting TypeKit to date, but this will provide a direct route for purchasing fonts from a foundry for use on the web.
TypeKit will still provide you access to a wide range of fonts for a low subscription fee, and will also go a long way to serving up the most appropriate format to different user agents.
Nice to see things moving forward and the industry starting to address the massive market that has been pretty much ignored to date.
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Problems using Typekit with Photoshop design work
There’s been a lot of discussion recently around progress getting font foundries to adopt a suitable licensing model for web distribution of font files, providing a way to render live text in a range of fonts. I’ve been playing around a little with Typekit with the intention of using this on a site I’m designing at the moment.
The main issue that I’ve hit is that Typekit is geared around web licensing and delivery of font files – so a subscription will give you access to a wide range of fonts that can then be downloaded from your site and used to render text. However the earlier stage in the workflow is working on page designs in Photoshop, and a Typekit subscription won’t give you any access or rights around downloading a font definition file to use for design work.
This means that theoretically I have much more freedom around typography, but only when I come to the build stage of the site. I wouldn’t necessarily mind paying for a font separately from the Typekit subscription, but I can’t actually find the same font I would like to use on the foundry site (admittedly this may just be my own stupidity).
I think this is just a teething issue with a new service – it’s being discussed on the support forum…
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Supporting native browser rendering of custom fonts
I’ve just been reading an article from Jeff Veen on a font-embedding technology coming up shortly. We’re going to be in a situation soon where every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font hosted on a web server, which is downloaded and used by the browser to render text. Although the technology is almost there, legal and copyright issues will take a lot longer to catch up. It looks like this could provide an interim solution, definately worth keeping an eye on.
