Fonts viewer software |
Embedding Fonts in Web PagesPC Magazine , October, 2003 by Neil RandallDesigning Web pages can be a frustrating experience if you like using nonstandard fonts, because there`s a good chance your visitors won`t be able to see those fonts in their browsers. Web browsers can display only the fonts installed on users` systems, making it almost impossible to build creative font choices into your designs. The typical method for including an unusual font on a page is to create a graphic of the text, then insert the graphic into the HTML page. But while this works well enough for short headings, it`s a poor idea for longer text, because the resulting graphic requires extra download time, and because the graphic is much harder to edit than standard text. This method also has the disadvantage of being impossible for search engines to index. A useful alternative is to embed the fonts in the Web document so that they`ll be displayed even if the recipient`s system does not have those fonts installed. There are currently two options for doing this. Microsoft Web Embedding Fonts Tool (WEFT) lets you create font files in Embedded Open Type (EOT) format to upload to your Web server, allowing Internet Explorer 4.0 or later to display them. Bitstream offers a different solution that lets you embed fonts that are visible in either IE or Netscape Navigator 4 (but not 6 and 7), by pointing to a Portable Font Resource (PFR) file on the TrueDoc site (www.truedoc.com) or another Web server. Microsoft WEFT 3.2 is a free download available at www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/weft3. With this utility, you can create one EOT file for each font you wish to embed. You then code the pages to point to the font files by adding a <STYLE> element to the portion of the page. This element takes the following form: <STYLE > @font-face { font-family: fontname; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; src: url(fontname.eot); } </STYLE> The font-family element contains the name of the font in the EOT file referenced in the src: url line. When a visitor loads the page, IE knows to look for the file Fontname.eot when it encounters text that requires the font. The WEFT utility is wizard-driven, with a decent help system guiding you through the process. You begin by pointing WEFT to your site, where it performs a font analysis. As you work through the wizard, you specify the fonts you wish to embed, and WEFT creates the EOT file based on your decisions. You complete the process by adding the <STYLE> container shown above to each page on the site, and you can test it by accessing the site using a PC without the specifically embedded fonts installed. By contrast, TrueDoc`s dynamic fonts are contained in Portable Font Resource files (PFRs). Bitstream has made several PFRs available on its site for free use on your Web pages, a varied selection ranging from Calligraphic 421 through Snow Cap and Zurich Black Extended. For commercial applications, Bitstream requires that you host the PFRs on your own site. The Bitstream technology works via SCRIPT and LINK tags in the HEAD container of the HTML document and FONT tags within the BODY container. The SCRIPT line points to a font-viewer JavaScript app on the TrueDoc site, while the LINK tags point to the specific PFRs the browser needs to render the fonts on the page. FONT tags surround each block of text that`s rendered by each PFR, with the FACE attribute specifying the font and other attributes, such as SIZE and COLOR, configuring the font precisely. You can also use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to apply the fonts by using CSS`s font-family attribute. Of course, making use of a wide variety of fonts almost always brings up questions of font ownership. Because of the way we use fonts”calling them up at will from within applications”it`s easy to forget that fonts aren`t simply in the public domain. In the case of TrueDoc, Bitstream offers a technology called DockLock to tie the PFRs to your Web server, allowing only documents located on that server to render the fonts. Because Microsoft`s WEFT relies on EOT files stored on the Web server, it effectively does the same thing. But WEFT offers greater flexibility by allowing the possibility of producing any font as an EOT, as long as the font has been designated by the font`s owner/designer to be embeddable. WEFT determines embeddability during its analysis process, or you can manually check the fonts on your systems by downloading and installing the Font Properties Extension utility from www.microsoft.com/typography and examining the Properties dialog of the fonts in your Fonts folder. Font embedding seems such a clear enhancement for Web designers that it`s a bit difficult to understand why it hasn`t caught on more. Having to deal with font ownership may be one reason. Another may be that neither of the two current solutions work with modern browsers other than IE. But given that many designers already create separate documents for IE and Netscape users, and that IE remains the dominant browser, it seems worth giving TrueDoc or WEFT a try as a workable solution to a persistent design problem. Copyright 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine. A Microsoft Word 97 template that can generate an attractive document that contains a sample of all your installed fonts.Advanced Font Viewer makes it easy to manage, view and print your fonts. Advanced Font Viewer gives you a lot of advanced features.FreeEasy Font Viewer allows you to choose the best font out of all the fonts available. As there are lots of fonts and your applications do not display.PrecisionID MICR E13B Fonts free download. This MICR font package contains one multi-purpose MICR E-13B font and 10 additional variations of this font which.Code 39 bar code fonts in TrueType, PostScript and PCL formats for Windows, Now it is easy to choose the font that fit your needs from all fonts.AL Font Installer free download. This program is addition to the control panel Windows Fonts. It provides more convenient way for installing a new fonts on.JobSpecific-Font Assigner free download. Reads/writes font references to/from any PostScript printer driver listed in your Win. ini file.Print bar code 3/9 from Windows using TrueType or PostScript fonts. Project index
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