I’ve been hard at work at a new website (http://www.righthandpointing.com) and I use Frontpage 2003. I’m really interested in the look of the thing and so I went to great lengths to select a font I liked (which, as it turns out, is called Eurostile). So, I did the whole site in Eurostile and then was reminded of what I already vaguely knew, that if a machine reading the website doesn’t have that font installed, it goes to a default font, which is often the dreaded, overused Times New Roman.
Is there a way around this problem? Like having the font sort of, like, included in the website?
Thanks for your attention to a dumb question, O C&F Geek Oracle.
You convert the text to .gif and that way you have the font you want as a graphic. Disadvantage: loads slower. Advantage: more control over formatting/layout.
For goodness’ sake: You wouldn’t have this problem if you would just use a Mac. .
P.S. I do but jest, of course. I did a fair amount of graphic design years ago (didn’t use a Mac much, even then, which was blasphemous); somehow have found the gumption to start learning a wee bit o’ Web design recently, and find myself grinding my teeth when I can’t festoon my pages with elegant fonts; web-safe fonts are so…pedestrian. I feel your pain. Don’t worry about the slow loading thing, though; all smart people with short attention spans must perforce have almighty fast computers. So it’s cool.
HTML font tags can include a list of alternative fonts in case the user’s browser can’t find your preferred one. I don’t know whether these alternatives are easy to specify using FrontPage Express or whatever, but if you were hand coding, or if your creator program lets you, the cleanest and easiest way of doing this is to use a cascading style-sheet.
Here’s a sample entry for the basic “body” font in such a style-sheet:
BODY {font: 11pt/14pt Eurostile, Verdana, Helvetica, Wisely, Chiffoni, sans-serif }
And of course you can list any fonts you like in order of preference. The generic descriptor “sans-serif” will keep Times Roman out of the way, since that is a serif font (has little feet and tips on the letters) although you may end up with Arial, almost as bad.
If you REALLY want us all to be reading in Eurostile, the other thing I’ve seen some sites do is to offer a link to let users download and install a font. This is usually for some fancy typeface such as Deathmetal Light Gothic Fancy Script Oldstyle.
Before going that far for the sake of Eurostile, though, I’d suggest you become a little bit less of a control freak about this. HTML is just a markup language. Give the user’s browser a reasonable list of non-Times fonts and leave the result to Allah.
Sorry Dale. Some default will be displayed if the font is not on the machine running the browser. (Times New Roman is likely on a PC as your selected font is has serifs - but no guarantees.
I have that font on my PC, so it looks pretty cool when I browse the site IE or NS7. Mac + Safari is rendering in Helvetica. Mac + IE is rendering in the base serif font.
Nice job BTW - That’s better work than I generally see done with FrontPage. I hand hack HTML, CSS, ASP, & etc. in a text editor.
I like your writing, so I’ll have to check out the content as it matures.
Peace,
Steve is right too. I was going to ecplain how to do it with CSS - but decided against it.
Another disadvantage to this approach is that it makes your site totally inaccessible to blind people, unless you replicate all of the text in an ALT attribute, which would be pretty cumbersome.
There is indeed a way to embed fonts on a page, but it’s kind of complicated and it only works in certain browsers. You can convert your font into a special format called .eot, which you can do with a program called WEFT, and then embed that font in your pages, but it’ll only work in Internet Explorer. There’s also something called TrueDoc but that only works in selected browsers as well. So I’d just follow Steve’s advice above.
Silly me! I answered the question as if I was talking to my development team. I’m a project manager for internet based applications and content managed websites - so I gave a global perspective answer.
I usually give answers expecting the site will need to have pretty close look-n-feel on PC+IE5up, PC+NS7, PC+Opera, PC+Mozilla & Firefox, Mac+Safari, Mac+IE, and Mac+NS7. That will account for a lot of “no way chowderhead” kind of answers.
In web development the mostest commonest common denominator is my bias. Ok, that’s grammatical and mathematical rubbish, but you get the idea.
My previous answer applies to the larger universe of OS+Browser combos - and has very little to do with cosmological psychology.
Although, as mentioned above, this means that ONLY people who use Internet Explorer will see that font. Granted, Internet Explorer is by far the most popular browser in use today, but if it were me I would prefer to have a page that looks at least roughly the same no matter what browser you’re using. For that reason (and for the sake of simplicity), I would vote for using standard fonts for text and headings.
If I’m allowed to say so (since it was my suggestion) …
I think it’s more readable in Verdana than in Eurostile. L.E. McCollough’s page is still in Eurostile, so it’s easy to compare. Eurostile’s a bit of a strain for me to read, which I find distracting and might keep me from reading as much. IMO, Verdana is the standard web font that gives the most sophisticated look, which is why I suggested it.
Well, I’m still working on it. Turns out I used Verdana Ref, which isn’t as common, but I liked better. So, I need to go back now and switch everything to plain Verdana.
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