Good Old @Font-Face Rule Revisted

Ralf Hermann

With the new possibilities of the CSS3 property @font-face a veritable gold
digging atmosphere is taking hold of web designers. There՚s hope that the
common monotony of system fonts will be abolished soon by web font
embedding which enables web designers to choose practically any typeface
and font-style they want – just like in print design. This article looks at the
history and today՚s possibilities of web font embedding.

From the early days of the Internet web designers have used system fonts
for the majority of Web sites. The Web site offers fonts like Times New
Roman, Arial or Verdana to the browser. If the suggested font is installed on
the client, the browser will use it. If not, the font is replaced by the client՚s
default font. This means that web designers only have little influence on
what the Web site will look like, because the same Web site will be
displayed with different fonts on different computers and in different
browsers.

1 h 1 {

2 font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

3 }

With regard to typography, the web is way behind of what՚s possible in
print design. For example headlines: In print design condensed typefaces
come in handy for headlines as they allow more words to fit in one line. In
system font collections, however, there are usually no condensed fonts.
Also, companies cannot ever use their own corporate fonts. Instead they