Forums > Technical Discussion > HTML Help

Posted: 22 years ago
The only way to do it with pure html is to do the writting as an image file and use an img tag.

Posted: 22 years ago
as in a jpg/gif for each page of writing?
Eurgh, a bit messy....
Is there any way just to get it to use an "online" font?
I thought maybe preloading it as you do an image for nav bars?

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude

Posted: 22 years ago
no, not if you are using pure html. If you wanna use like java or shockwave you can, but that's even more 'messy' than using images. If you compress it nicely, and use gif (so the background is transparent), then using images is fine.

however, whilst i can see a point in wanting a fancy font for logos, buttons etc (all of which you can use images for), i don't see the point in using a non standard font for large bodies of text. What most of you audience's computers already have are lots of easy to read fonts, at least one of which will fit in with a well designed page. Personally I dislike reading large amounts of text in non standard fonts, because standard fonts are what i am used to.

I'm not going to start making sweeping comments about webdesign, but if you look at a load of the really popular sites (i'm talking millions of hits a day), however stylish they look, they are simple. They look great, but it's done in such a way that it's compatible with as many computers/target systems as possible, which means using standards. At the other end of the scale, sites with animated gifs, scrolling marquee text, black backgrounds etc are pretty much all geocities homepages. The designers of the BBC pages for instance have my total respect. All the pages look good with the latest browsers, yet they look good with browsers that came out years ago and on strange computer architectures.

My advice to you is this. If there's a font that you *really* like, and it's a few hundred words or less per page then do it as an image per paragraph. If the site you are designing is meant to be small, artistic, different, eye catching etc, then doing this sort of thing is commonplace (although most of the use stuff like flash, shockwave etc). Just make sure you compress them right, so the page loads almost as fast as text would. If not, have a serious look through the preinstalled fonts. Tahoma for instance is perfectly nice for most things.

The last resort is making people download andd install the fonts. But seriously, if you think using images is messy, an install guide for visitors before they can look at the site?

Posted: 22 years ago
Embedding fonts in web pages? It rings a bell. perhaps the embed tag would do some good. Its been a while for me, I cant remember specifics, Read up and see if its possible. Otherwise, a download link and a "please, use this font" would help. I cant remember if I ever successfully embedded a font...

Most decent web design guides state that the only fonts you can and should expects are families - serif, san-serif, fixed-width. Being more specific than that gets you in trouble with OS combinations. On the other hand, the 90% of systems with IE browsers out there have Tahoma installed, and its currently my favourite on screen font - its designed for on screen legibility, as opposed to the majority of fonts which are designed for paper.

--Luke

Posted: 22 years ago
A Google search gives the first link

All hail the mighty power of Google!
Hail!
Hail!

Actually, knowing that the jargon for that is embedding is the most useful thing..

--Luke

Posted: 22 years ago

quote:

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To work in IE4 and above, you need to add a pointer to an ActiveX control immediately after the LINK tag OR ELSE create an OpenType file for Explorer and refer to both on your page.

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activex being the operative word. It does work, but it ain't standard html and won't work with all browsers.

Posted: 22 years ago
When all else fails, go to

www.htmlgoodies.com

Some Jarhead last night: "this dumb a$$ thinks hes fireproof"

Posted: 22 years ago
just a side note if you want to use a font that you think only a few people will not have you can allways designate a second choise font all you have to do is put a (,) after the first font then type the other choise, then in they don't have the font the other is used.


missie

I {Heart} hand me downs and spinning in the snow.<br /><br />

Posted: 22 years ago
I think flid's right on more than one account..First, requiring a user to download a specific font, even if taking advantage of the font embedding tekk(ala CSS) by nutscrape n ie is still a bit messy in it's implementation, n isn't really used by your top end web designers. A specific font catering to the theme of the site is kewl, but you want to(imo) limit to anything that is not concerned with general information(text), usually images. Tru site design is still designing for some sort of lowest common denominator, depending on how lo you want to go. I just don't think that bar should go below the set of fonts installed with most OS, leest til a better standard is in place..

also missie es right, you can have a list of alternate fonts to use in your font-family tag of your style sheet, gives you an aleternate font to use if the primary font is not available

First intention, then enlightenment..
Ars Pyronomica

" Life is programmed. Whether death is programmed or not is yet to be determined."

Posted: 22 years ago
damm double postes

First intention, then enlightenment..
Ars Pyronomica

" Life is programmed. Whether death is programmed or not is yet to be determined."

Posted: 22 years ago
OK, cool
I see your point Flid and it seems very valid.
No matter how flashy the site looks, if the info isn't clear and easy to read - the site's worthless.

The thing I find annoying (well, not the best word but it'll do) is that for the pictures, notably, fire & UV, they stand-out so much better on a black background, whereas text doesn't...

I think I'll take your advice and stick to the ol' TNR or Arial - thanks everyone for their help though

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude

Posted: 22 years ago

quote:

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The thing I find annoying (well, not the best word but it'll do) is that for the pictures, notably, fire & UV, they stand-out so much better on a black background, whereas text doesn't...

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true, so use tables. Give each image a black border of say 15 pixels and a 1 pixel grey line around that. Depends on your colour scheme. I like greys and blues myself. I spent a long time designing a web frontend to some software for building photo gralleries that i wrote and after trying lots of funky colours etc, I ended up with grey thou. Not because it's exciting but because it's the most neutral colour and doesn't draw attention away from the pictures.

have a look round at a few sites that have fotos on, they steal their design