Big news in the web world as Typekit was launched last week. For those of you who missed news of the launch, it serves to bridge the copyright issues associated with the CSS3 Property @font-face (hotly debated issue among foundries and developers recently). Solutions like sIRF and Cufon have greatly pushed the industry in this direction and, while we have used them on projects, they have limitations, particularly when it comes to body copy. The hole with @font-face is that it makes it possible for the end user to download the font in question, which in virtually every instance violates the license.
The concept behind Typekit harnesses @font-face but protects the font files on a separate server. The designer/developer/client would purchase a license (per site? per month?) to use the font. With an expected to launch sometime this summer, the major draw back seems to be the issues surrounding the storage of the font information on a different server from the website. (required to satisfy DRM licenses) The anticipated problem with this surrounds the issues associated with the uptime (and downtime) of this font server. No server is up 100% of the time, it just doesn’t happen. But what happens when this server goes down? Potentially all websites linking to this central database will lose their font definitions.
Sharing code snippits on a central server hasn’t presented a prohibitive problem in the past as the jQuery library, CSS Resets and other snippits are all available hosted on a central server and used on major sites world wide and downtime hasn’t presented itself as a problem. Although we might be comparing apples and oranges between Google’s servers and Typekits. Time will tell. Certain some exciting developments for sure!
Tags: accessibility, code, css, Interactive, Typography, Websites
