Why is the web great for everything except fonts?
What is with the half-broken, difficult, problematic, proprietary, buggy, near-unworkable, and otherwise unsatisfactory solutions we’re presented with for rendering fonts beyond the chosen few web-safe fonts? Seriously, with all of the magical, amazing, and near-miraculous innovations that developers bring to the web in other quarters, why is it that basic specialized font rendering is somehow beyond everyone?
As a developer I want to be able to simply place copy in a <p> tag or <h2> or <li> or any other appropriate text markup and have it render in the font I prescribe. I don’t want it to render as an image and I don’t want to have to adjust and readjust my CSS to accommodate the buggy results. I don’t want to have to worry about line breaks or dimension or anything else that is non-contextual. I just want text to behave like text. Period.
As a consumer I want to see things the way the designer/developer intended me to see them …unless I want to override that default presentation according to my preference. And I don’t want your buggy, shoddy, broken font rendering solution to get in my way. Ever.
Here’s a challenge for developers: Create the tool or technology that allows for what I’m describing here. Do it right; no hackery and no buggy, whimsical results. Maybe even demand that people purchase your solution. You will have earned that reward. Do this very soon. Stop making everything else until this one job is accomplished, for this is too basic a problem to leave unattended.
Just get it frickin done. Is this really too much to ask?
UPDATE:
What he said: http://tinyurl.com/cyexkk
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Comments (7)
Although I agree, this does sound a little like Oscar Rogers from Saturday Night Live. ;)
“Fix it!”
I blame Microsoft’s lack of open-mindedness in the open source arena. Unfortunately for you and I, Microsoft’s browser comes standard on pre-fab computers across the world. The most widely available browser is the most unforgiving and buggy. I’d pay a large chunk of cash, and even subscribe on a yearly basis for such a product.
You have to admit, though, it’s Microsoft that commissioned Georgia, Trebuchet, Verdana, etc. and in a short time in the late 90’s pretty much tripled the number of usable typefaces on the web. No, they’re not open source, but it was effective. Apart from the introduction of CSS, this had to have been the biggest jump for typography on the web to that point.
I really don’t know what you mean by adjusting and readjusting CSS.
@Joe Clark:
I’m talking about having to hack sIFR into rendering what I want rendered by jacking up the CSS to achieve the appropriate visual display.
The problem with font display only comes into play for fonts that users don’t have on their computer, because we’re “borrowing” the user’s computer – not giving them stuff from ours (or our host). And, there is a way to import fonts via CSS (may take a minute to DL – just like embedding font families into Flash).
So, what sacrifice do we make: Download times in favor of embedding fonts? or, font choice?
The other option is, of course, to cut back Intellectual property rights for font-foundries to allow the legal redistribution of those fonts.
(Run into the same problem with printed media; wherein, the safest bet is to convert text to paths – just in case the printer doesn’t have that wicked font we used.)
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