Web Design in a Nutshell

Chapter 26. Embedded Font Technology

Both Netscape Navigator 4.0+ and Internet Explorer 4.0+ support embedded font technology, enabling them to render your web pages with exactly the fonts you’ve chosen. Although they are called “embedded fonts,” the font information is actually in a separate compressed file linked to the HTML document. When the page is downloaded to the client, so is the necessary font information. Although still in its infancy, this is a great breakthrough for designers who want traditional control over type display.

The W3C gave its blessing to embedded fonts by providing a means for importing fonts (the @font-face function) in its Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2 Recommendation.

Not surprisingly, there are two competing embedded font technologies: TrueDoc (developed by Bitstream and licensed by Netscape), and OpenType (developed by Microsoft and Adobe). TrueDoc’s “Dynamic Fonts” can be viewed by Navigator 4.0+ and Internet Explorer 4.0+ on Windows, Mac, and Unix platforms. TrueDoc fonts creation and embedding tools exist for both Windows and Mac as well. The current version of Microsoft’s OpenType works only with Internet Explorer 4.0 on the Windows platform.

As of this writing, TrueDoc technology is presenting itself as the best solution for embedded fonts. It offers cross-platform viewing on both major browsers, cross-platform creation tools, the ability to compress both TrueType and Type 1 fonts, and better security against font piracy. However, like ...