Re: Web Fonts

A nice idea in theory, but in practice the progressive rendering  
looks awful (i.e., displaying the "wrong" font until the "right" one  
downloads).  The examples on Microsoft's own Web site just look  
ridiculous when the pages change to accommodate the (often radically  
different) fonts.  Admittedly in these Microsoft examples they don't  
specify any information to help with the selection of a closer font  
match before the new one has downloaded (I assume that portion of the  
Web Fonts spec isn't supported by WinIE),  Site authors who want to  
use some random free font shouldn't have to specify that level of  
technical detail.

When your choices are:

@font-face {
  .... huge pile of stuff just to make progressive rendering look  
good...
}

...and...

"Don't progressively render"

... the choice seems pretty obvious to me.

If we implemented this in Safari, IMO it would be better to just show  
nothing to avoid the ugly flash as the new font snapped in place on  
top of the old (in the same way browsers attempt to avoid showing  
content before stylesheets have loaded for example).

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

On Aug 24, 2006, at 2:00 PM, David Woolley wrote:

>
> One point that had not been made by the time that I left the office
> was that one purpose of having detailed font data is to allow the
> viewer to choose its best approximation of the face before the
> font has downloaded, or instead of downloading the font.

Received on Thursday, 24 August 2006 21:19:03 UTC