Font embedding for web pages

[charleychacko]

If you like using not-so-common fonts on your web pages, there's good news... you may finally be able to get some sleep knowing that more of your visitors will be able to view your pages with the type of fonts you used to design them.

Font embedding, introduced in HTML 4.0 compatible browsers such as Explorer 4.x and Communicator 4.x, is a way to include fonts with the documents in which they are used. If you use a font that's not yet available on your visitor's computer, the browser will automatically download the font before displaying the web page, somewhat similar to the way images are loaded with web pages.

The bad news is that Explorer 4.x and Communicator 4.x offer different types of font embedding technologies. Although it is currently possible to use different font embedding tags for both browsers in a single page, you may want to target web pages to specific browsers or change the tags depending on the browser (using server-side browser detection for example).

Microsoft Typography
Microsoft's Typography group researches and develops fonts and font technologies, and supports the development of TrueType and OpenType fonts by independent type vendors.
World Wide Web Consortium's Font Recommendations
Netscape Communicator's Dynamic Font Support
Listing #1 : Font embedding information sources