A new era in web typography starts today
Apple released Safari 3.1 today — the first major browser that I’m aware of to include downloadable web font technology using the CSS @font-face rule. This means that you can now spec non-standard fonts for your web pages without using workarounds like sIFR. Of course, this won’t become widespread until more browsers implement this technology.
Check out this test page (it’ll only look impressive in Safari 3.1) and the A List Apart article on how to implement it.
Immediate drawbacks I see:
- could raise font pirating concerns, since URLs for downloading the source fonts are publicly accessible
- it only appears to work with TrueType fonts, not PostScript or more modern OpenType fonts (though this makes sense since only TrueType has truly widespread support)