Review of Popular Web Font Embedding

Services

Andrew Follett

In the mid-80s the desktop publishing revolution began with the
introduction of the Mac Plus, Aldus PageMaker and the Apple LaserWriter
printer. It took quite a few years for these tools to make an impact on the
design and publishing world, but once they did, there was no looking back.

In 2010 we see a similar revolution starting to take shape with web fonts.
Even though @font-face was introduced in the CSS2 spec in 1998, it
wasn՚t until this past year that all in-use web browsers added support for it.
In 2010 we have also seen a wave of web font services being marketed, and
this could have a profound impact on web typography.

Web font services, like Typekit and now the Google Font API, have captured
a lot of attention. But in the middle of 2010 there՚s been an explosion of
new services; services like Fonts Live, Fontdeck, Webtype and others with
conjugated names involving “Font” or “Type”.

Comparison of 10 popular web font services

While all of these services are unique, they each provide a tool for web
designers and developers to legally display professional fonts on their Web
site. The following guide compares 10 of these services, breaking down the
pros and cons of each.