Font embedding
In an earlier post, I mentioned how few fonts are available to Web designers. Out of the thousands that can be displayed on a computer monitor we are stuck, for ordinary text, with about a dozen.
One solutions would be font embedding. You could upload a subset of characters to go with a particular set of Web pages, and the visitor’s browser could draw on it. That way, the pages would display the way you wanted them to. And in fact, the technology exists. I know of three ‘solutions’: sIFR (or scalable Inman Flash Replacement); Microsoft’s free WEFT (Web Embedding Fonts Tool); and Bitstream’s patented TrueDoc Imaging Technology.
If you are interested in sIFR, a good place to start is the blog page Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text. Its main disadvantage as a tool is that it relies on the visitor’s having installed the Flash Player—and it takes a bit of (JavaScript) programming.
WEFT was a product of the Browser Wars period. Its crippling disadvantage is that it only works in Internet Explorer. (So OK for a Windows intranet, but out of the question for the Internet.)
To use Bitstream’s TrueDoc you either need to pay for and install its complex software development kit (SDK) or upload existing PFR files—which also cost money, and are hedged with legal restrictions. (And may not work in all browsers.)
Pessimistic conclusion: until someone comes up with an open-source technology that works in Firefox, Safari and Opera as well as in IE, we’re stuck with the same few fonts.
Optimistic conclusion: Flash is available in most browsers. And I quite like the look of sIFR…