Using Web Fonts Could Greatly Expand Your Site Design Options
Although one would never expect it, the fonts on many websites sometimes cause web designers a good deal of frustration. Because we are unable to read the computer languages that tell an application what specific numbers and letters to show on the screen, these applications must also be told exactly how to display them, from the structure of sentences and paragraphs to the look of the fonts. Creative web designers, until recently, could only select from a small palette of fonts since all fonts are not universal to all programs and applications.
To view what we see on a computer screen, there are thousands of different kinds of information files that must be interpreted by the programs and applications we use. To have a program or website display text in the proper font and format, all of the display rendering information held within the font file must be accessible and properly decoded by the program or applications involved. This factor is a significant challenge for designers, since each computer has its own collection of fonts installed, and there are literally thousands of fonts to choose from.
Of course, there would be no problem if all of the content of a text were created, displayed, stored and used locally on a single computer, or within a single home or office network. However, since everything from computers to mobile phones and other portable devices now contain web browsers, websites must be created in ways that maintain a consistent design regardless of the viewing platform. This problem is usually circumvented by simply removing your design options and sticking to a relatively tiny range of fonts common to nearly all web browsers and systems. Yes, the style of the website will remain consistent throughout the different viewing devices, but this comes at the great expense of limiting a site designer’s creativity.
With the recent developments made in the internet and server technology, website designers are beginning to take advantage of a growing list of fonts that are stored in online files, allowing them to go beyond that small group of fonts locally stored on most computers. From the drastically increased internet connection speeds, it is now possible to store a great amount of font information online, which can be quickly downloaded and displayed without affecting the visitors’ site usability in any adverse way.
With web fonts, website visitors are increasingly able to view the sites in the manner that was intended by their creators and designers. To use a specific web font, the designer must link its relevant display information from the site code, so the web browsers will know exactly where to locate and access it. Applying the linked font is just as easy as applying regular fonts; the designer simply has to add the linked font to the site’s CSS, just as before.
The only possible drawback is that you may have to pay a fee to be allowed to use many of the highly stylized web fonts. Because fonts are actually made by people, who need resources to live and work, it is pretty understandable that one would have to pay at least a small amount for regular access and use of someone else’s creation. Yet even this is changing, as many font creators are increasingly making their fonts free to access and use under new open-source licenses.
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