[Lunatique]

I'm using a specific font for my website, but if the person browsing it doen't have that font installed, his/her browser will just use a substitute font, which is NOT good, since the use of that font is crucial to the overall design of my site.

Is there a way for me to force download of the font, or am I sh*t outta luck?

I used to use gifs for buttons, but I find that a bit inefficient for people with slower connections.

[Socar MYLES]

I'd go with the .gifs, if I were you. It is possible to force downloads from your site, but it's VERY annoying for viewers. Not everyone's going to want to download an extra font. I personally can't stand sites where I've got to download something before I can view them.

[eyewoo]

quote:

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or am I sh*t outta luck?

---

Yepsir... you guessed it...

If you want to insure design that uses font styles, then the letters have to be graphics.

The sad fact is, HTML was never engineered for designers, though it has certainly been pushed in ways that the original engineers probably never envisioned...

You may find this a useful link. It's a site I developed to demonstrate some simple graphical uses for HTML. Some of it is a little outdated - could be done better - but I think there's some unique ideas there.

The GHTML site

[ June 09, 2002: Message edited by: eyewoo ]

[Pat]

You can also compose the site in Flash. If you resist the urge to animate every little button and widget so it's not so annoying, it can work well as a design tool. It offers the font support you're looking for and it anti-aliases them as well.

-Pat

[Lunatique]

Grrr. I was afraid of that.

Socar- yeah, hate forced download too, but I was thinking more of a hidden pre-loading type thing that won't be detected.

eyewoo- hey, that's pretty cool! I never evolved beyond WYSIWYG design tools like Dreamweaver, so I'm so html unsavvy it's not even funny. BTW, your script for getting rid of the underlines worked great. Thanks!

Pat- you know, I've been thinking about turning my site into a flash forever now, but the thought of redoing my site just gives me a headache(I've got so much stuff in there). Besides, the only thing that bugs me a bit right now is that I'd have to make gifs for the navigation buttons that requires the handwritten font. The rest of my site is kept very simple on purpose for ease of browsing and slower connections.

*sigh* Guess I'll just bite the bullet and add the extra gifs. Grrr....

[Steelwind]

I used an image map for my navigation. That way I only have one image, with all my links, and the font I wanted. I was happy.

[LoTekK]

funny, i was just thinking about this last night... i promptly looked up the idea, and came upon a couple of options... while not perfect, they may work for you...

essentially you can embed fonts into your webpages... though it's not as simple as it should be, unfortunately... it requires converting the font in question into an embedded font type... well, i can't explain it as well as the article can, so here's the link:
Font Embedding Tutorial - Steve Mulder

hope that helps somewhat...


[edit] dumbass that i am, i pasted the wrong url... o_O [/edit]

[ June 09, 2002: Message edited by: LoTekK ]

[Lunatique]

I can't use an image map, since I have rollover buttons that glow when you pur your cursor over it. It's basically the same site as I have now, but with extra navigation, that's all.

[strata]

luna: you can do mouseovers with an image map... I forget HOW, but I know I've done it... it wasn't very difficult coding from what I remember... you basically just defined a list with the images and the name tags and then set the name tags to the same as those in the image map and just had it change the entire pic on a mouseover... =)

[LoTekK]

@luna: quick thing - your "links" button rollover isn't lighting up...

[Lunatique]

LoTekK- still? Check now.

[HawkOne]

Hi Luna,

I just felt like dumping some infoporn here, since I think there are still some "professional webdesigners" out there who never heard of this stuff. Although LoTekks link would have brought curious "researchers" upon most of this info, I just thought I'd summarise the info a bit. Using the blurbs from the respective technologies.

TrueDoc by Bitstream
Instead of relying on the default fonts that users have in their browsers, web authors can now create pages using the fonts they have on their systems with the assurance that those pages will display in a browser with their font formatting intact.
TrueDoc.com webpage / Demo site

Microsoft WEFT
Font embedding has been a feature of Microsoft applications such as Word and PowerPoint� for several years. It allows the fonts used in the creation of a document to travel with that document, ensuring that a user sees documents exactly as the designer intended them to be seen. Font embedding technology is built into Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 4 and above) bringing embedded fonts to the Web.
Microsoft WEFT

HexWeb Typograph 2.0 for Mac users
Dynamic fonts offer more creative power to Web page designers. Instead of relying on the standard typefaces, Web authors can now create pages using the fonts they have on their systems (including multilingual fonts), with the assurance that those pages will display in a browser with their font formatting intact. Typograph integrates TrueDoc dynamic font technology with the latest version of Netscape Communicator so Web publishing professionals can create stylish HTML documents using different fonts and fonts styles. Typograph allows you to combine several fonts in one PFR (Portable Font Resource) file, or create individual PFR files for each font. This evaluation version provides full functionality, but you are not able to generate PFRs from the following characters: all numbers, @, ?, z, ? and ?. The full version of HexWeb Typograph does of course convert all characters.
HexWeb Typograph download

For more font info/links than you can shake a stick at, check this link out, it is a fantastic link page.
WEB-BUILDING.COM FONTS AND SOUND LINKS

That's all I think ...

[LoTekK]

@luna: yeah, it works now...

@hawkone: holy crap, good stuff you got there... an eye-opener, fer sure...

[Lunatique]

Damn, hawkone!! Wow wow wow!