Options for using special fonts on the web

As web designers, we want the ability to the ability to use fonts other than the basic web safe fontstacks. Eventhough browsers developers are working on solutions for us, the lack of native support and licensing are the main obstacles we need to get past. In the meantime, sIFR and cufon are great workarounds.

Mozilla announced the support of the WOFF file format in the upcoming Firefox (3.6) release. WOFF fonts are a smaller, more compressed format that allows for faster downloads.

Related articles:

• Rich Typography On The Web: Techniques and Tools – explains all the current techiques
• @font-face in Depth
• Becoming a Font Embedding Master
• cufon
• Web fonts — where are we?
• Matrix of fonts bundled with Mac and Windows
• Guide to CSS Font Stacks: Techniques and Resources
• sIFR
• 10 Great Free Fonts for @font-face embedding
• WOFF