[thelist] font questions

[Nan Harbison]

Thanks everyone for your helpful responses! I did call the business owner
with the information you all gave me. With this support, I won this round,
we will be using a font that is accessible in the list that Davoud sent me
the link to.
Yay!
You all are the best!
Nan

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Robert O'Rourke
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 8:30 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] font questions

Nan Harbison wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
> The graphics artist that designed a website I am building specified 
> Din as the heading and all subheading fonts, Din Light, DIn Medium and 
> Din Bold. I didn't have this font on my computer, so I had to purchase 
> it - I purchased the package she directed me to, but I still don't 
> have the light and medium, only a bunch of others, like Din 
> RegularAlternative, etc.The graphics artist thinks people do have these
fonts on their computers.
>  
> I am pretty sure that if a website specifies a font, and the computer 
> viewing the page doesn't have this font, it displays as some default 
> font, like Times New Roman. Is that correct?
>  
> Second question, do you think most computers come with these fonts? My 
> husband checked at his office, 75 computers and none have these 
> fonts.If not, is there a way to embed the font in a website without 
> having to create graphics as the headers for every page so they will 
> display as Din? (I didn't include this in my price!!!).
>  
> I have told the artist that I prefer to use as much text as possible, 
> not graphics, because it is easier to make changes to the text and it 
> loads faster. She doesn't think that would be a problem, but she has 
> been pretty clueless about other web-related issues.
>  
> Thanks!
>  
> Nan
>  
>   

Hiya,

    You can't rely on that font being on anyone's computer, I've never even
heard of it till now. It's best to find a similar common font then in the
CSS do something like:

    body { font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;  }

The website will render with the first available font in that list back to
the user's default sans-serif font. Even if the user has Din installed it
might not look too good in a web browser.

You can either quote your client for the headings or look into something
like sIFR, it uses flash to replace headings with nicely anti-aliased custom
fonts while maintaining accessibility.

http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr

It will still take some time to implement though...

As a reference for yourself (and pass it on to the designer too) this site
lists the most reliable fonts to use for regular website text: 
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

Rob
-- 

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