'Pushing' a font to the user

[Paul.Yeoman]

Hi all,

I've searched, but I can't find out if it's possible to 'push' a font out to a user so that they can view my website as designed.

My site is (for the moment) at http://ccgi.paulyeoman.plus.com/sparkle/ - you'll see that the headers for the product pages (accessed via the sidebar) come up in Arial.

The font I've specified is Zapfino Linotype One (which is free), and that is the same font as that used in the header image.

The reason I'd prefer that the user has the font as opposed to creating images for each header is that I want the headings to be dynamically generated - the info comes from a mySQL database. I'd like to just add products and categories to the DB without having to create new images for each one.

For reference, the CSS for the headers is:

Code: Select all

.ContentHeader {
    font-family: "Zapfino Linotype One";
    font-size: 60pt;
    text-align: center;
    }

Hopefully someone knows if this is possible and if so what steps I should follow.

If I need to make this clearer please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[craig]

Im nearly 100% sure this is not possible. It requires downloading a font and you cant force a user into doing this and there is no way that it can install directly.
Your prob not gonna like it, but if you really want that font, you'll have to create images and call the images from the database.
However I've looked at your site in a couple of fonts, (by disabling fonts), and I like the look of your site in the font Verdana.
You may want to consider this safe option...

Craig

[benbramz]

if you can force a font on sombody, you can force a trojan. its a security risk. there are that many fonts that im sure you can find a compramise.

what you could do, if the font is on the server, is create the images on the fly?

[masonbarge]

Yes you can do it easily as long as the font is embeddable. AFAIK it only works for IE5+ or 6, not sure when they enabled it. And yes, it's a security hole in IE. But using the technique doesn't hurt anyone's security, it's just one more thing about MS to piss you off and another reason to use FF.

The big reason it makes me mad is now everybody and his brother disables scripts. Forcing fonts is a really good idea, actually -- it's just that MS never seems to consider the vulnerabilities fully before they send a product to the market.

[benbramz]

Originally Posted by masonbarge

Yes you can do it easily as long as the font is embeddable. AFAIK it only works for IE5+ or 6, not sure when they enabled it. And yes, it's a security hole in IE. But using the technique doesn't hurt anyone's security, it's just one more thing about MS to piss you off and another reason to use FF.

The big reason it makes me mad is now everybody and his brother disables scripts. Forcing fonts is a really good idea, actually -- it's just that MS never seems to consider the vulnerabilities fully before they send a product to the market.

why develop a site for just one browser. if it cant be done properly for all then dfind another way of doing it.

[masonbarge]

It doesn't prevent other browsers from viewing the site in onboard fonts.

[Paul.Yeoman]

Thanks to you all for your replies.

I was initially enthusiastic about the idea of embedding the fonts, even though it's IE only, I'd fall back on Monotype Corsiva for the other browsers.

However I've just discovered that the font I want to use is 'non-embeddable'.

I quite liked the idea of creating images from the font on the fly, although I had another idea; perhaps I could use a tool which would automatically create images based on the product names in my database, and then I could upload these to the server after running the process once. Then I could simply run the process each time I added new products.

Does anyone know if there is a tool out there which can do this?

Thanks,

Paul

[benbramz]

Originally Posted by masonbarge

It doesn't prevent other browsers from viewing the site in onboard fonts.

i do realise that, however, im a beliver in a site that looks the same in all broswers.