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Comment by sushi | Hacker News Reader

Yes, there was no way to detect fonts on your computer without using Flash.

In chrome, I'm not seeing the flash warning message. I'm only seeing an endless "Loading your fonts..." I have click-to-play flash enabled.

Webfontloader[1] uses javascript to detect whether a specific font is available. They use a hack where they change the font of a piece of text and calculate whether the width has changed, indicating the system is using specified font instead of the default serif or san serif. If you had a large list of fonts, you could filter out the ones the user has.

[1] https://github.com/typekit/webfontloader.git

You'll have to enable flash for the website in order to use it. Since the flash element is hidden you can't click on it to play.

I'll check the library and see if I can use it. Being a JS noob I just patched up whatever I could find. I know there is lot of scope for improvement in code.

Why do I need flash to look at fonts?

http://www.imgur.com/mup4T.png

You really need a better fallback than NOPE these days when it comes to flash.

Just to be clear, Flash is being used to "detect" fonts on your computer.

As a user, not having flash made the whole thing useless, not just the parts that actually depended on flash.

You should support Web Fonts and progressively enhance using local fonts if Flash is enabled. Also, add something for those of us that can't stand to use the web without Click-to-Enable feature in Chrome/Firefox.

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