I read today that the web design industry could soon look forward to the ability of having typography as good on the web as it is in print. Currently the only web-safe are supported by all browsers,a collection that totals less than ten. Serif and Sans-Serif fonts make up this limited selection,which include the notorious Comic-Sans typeface, a favorite amongst my relatives when they start design wedding and birthday invites, coining the phrase ‘oh Comic-sans, let’s use that one’.
What’s gone before.
In the early 1990’s Microsoft developed a type format called EOT (Embedded Opentype Format) to be used in their Microsoft Word software. They later had the idea of using this same type format in their Internet Explorer browser software and enabled the browser to be EOT compatible since 1996. Their plan was to get their arch rival of the time Netscape them and make this an Open Format so that the internet of the future had the ability to support rich typography. Well unfortunately, for whatever reason, Netscape decided to use another standard so no format was adopted and the EOT propriety remained with Microsoft.
Now Bill Hill, over on the IE Blog has been fighting the good fight to make typography on the Web as good as we’re used to seeing in print. The main issue with having an open type format on the web is the legalities, similar to how music companies copyright their material, allowing personal use of a paid for track but disallowing a public performance of that same song with additions fees being paid.
Ascender Corporation and its collaborators in the typographic community help maintain the legalities of font use. In its introduction to the technologies of font embedding on the Web, Ascender says,
Fonts play a critical role in the display, printing and manipulation of text-based information and content. Font embedding is a broad and complex topic, and we hope this website becomes a valuable resource for everyone who creates or uses fonts to learn more about proper font usage and licensing.
So what’s changed
Currently only Internet Explorer supports EOT, leaving others browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Opera refusing to support EOT until it is officially recognised as the Open Web Standard. EOT has now been presented to the W3C in an attempt to make this the standard. If the W3C pass EOT then the web design industry could see movement towards having a Open Web Standard for typography supported by all the leading Browsers.
For more information on all things Font related, please visit www.fontembedding.com.
Example of EOT css markup
@font-face {
font-family: Cambria;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(CAMBRIA2.eot);
}
Will we see any movement soon?
Well this has been in the air for well over ten years already so I wouldn’t expect it to happen overnight. Even if the W3C supported EOT the major players like Firefox, Chrome and Safari have to support it for it to be a success. It only takes one miserable git to spoil the party. All in all it’s a step forward, let’s just hope something happens sooner rather than later.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
The spirit of the internet is to be open – I hope they eventually stop being prats and just reach an agreement that lets us use crazy fonts everywhere.
Kudos for using Achewood – I’m totally down with that, dog.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Netscape’s lack of adoption was not a barrier to Microsoft making EOT an open standard back then.
Rather I think that the ISO farce that was OOXML is a less hypothetical example of Microsoft’s approach to openness.