[whatwg] Need document.available_fonts() call

On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 09:33 -0400, Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> On 5/11/10 7:47 AM, Daniel Glazman wrote:
> > Another detection technique based on the computed style of the
> > 'font-family' property would work much better.
> 
> Uh... the computed value of font-family is just the specified value (CSS 
> 2.1 section 15.3).  So no, you can't detect _used_ font-family values 
> based on the computed value in this case.
> 
> -Boris
> 


Is there really much of a need for this though? CSS as it stands has
support for a list of fonts to be specified for an element, and a
browser can go through them until it finds one that is installed.

The only argument I've seen is that various fonts are obviously
different sizes, and so falling back to a different font might look best
if the font-size also changed with it. However, I don't think it's such
a great idea for fonts to be used as a layout tool. The layout should be
fluid enough for minor font differences. This is not forgetting that the
font a designer specifies for a page might be completely overridden by a
user for a variety of reasons (larger fonts for someone with a visual
disability, colour changes for someone with dyslexia, etc)

Lastly, if a designer really needs to specify the exact font used on a
page, then CSS3 has an area for embedded fonts (which are supported in
various forms on the major browsers)

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/attachments/20100511/530275e2/attachment.htm>

Received on Tuesday, 11 May 2010 06:39:09 UTC