Typekit launches

I love the idea... unfortunately something is seriously wrong with their website. They're selling fonts you can use on other websites. I'd expect that they know a lot about fonts - yet, when you look at their own source:

    font-family:arial,sans-serif;

Why don't they buy at least one really high quality font from (for example) Linotype? Not even for reselling, but for use on their own website - to show the difference it can make... Why do they try to sell fonts for websites, but don't try to blow my mind by using one of ITCs, or Vialog, or something else for their own main text.

Jeff, Greg and Ryan (3/4s of Typekit) spent a year redesigning Analytics after Google bought Measure Map.

Jeff once said that -- using the Analytics APIs they had access to -- Greg and Ryan basically prototyped a fully working version of Analytics as we know it today in a/b a month. It then took the remaining 11 months of them working with Goog engineers, PMs, etc. to get the thing out the door.

They're an amazing team and I'm looking forward to following along w/ the success of Typekit.

I really like the idea, but there are some implementation problems I haven't yet seen addressed. I'm very much in the target market (web designer / developer), and I'd like very much for this to work, but I just don't see it.

Here's my issues / questions, would be interested in hearing why I'm wrong:

- The fonts available on typekit aren't the ones I want to use. Without support for the Linotype / ITC / Adobe fonts, I'm left choosing a font from what you do offer, and at that point I might as well just choose a free one and host it myself. Any plans to get the big-name foundries on board?

FWIW, the fonts I most often need this for are the various flavors of Helvetica, Gotham, Trajan Pro, and Myriad Pro.

- The main benefit to cufon/sIFR/etc is that it works with all browsers, specifically those that don't support @font-face. This doesn't solve that problem. I know typekit falls back to standard fonts, but I can do that.

- I usually avoid fancy fonts in all but headings and other large elements. If the text is static its not a big deal to save the text in Photoshop and use text-indent to replace the plaintext. Dynamic text, like blog post titles, is a pain in the ass, but cufon / sIFR handles that case well enough.

- Its one more server and one more fee added to the equation. Furthermore, I don't have enough confidence in this business model to trust the service to remain around forever.

Why this, as opposed to sIFR, Cufon, or other free techniques that are currently being used for font replacement? (Honest question.)

It's a pity that to use the fonts I would like to on my single website, I'd have to sign up for the portfolio plan, which is a reasonable $49.99 for the first year, but jumping up to $17 a month thereafter.

It's too much for me to justify, when the font could be purchased for $40, with a license that allowed the use of sIFR.

Just dropping in to note Kernest (http://kernest.com/), which uses @font-face as well, but without the Javascript that makes Typekit somewhat undesirable.

I tried it a few months ago and really liked it: http://shortformblog.com/tech/the-importance-of-knowing-kern...

Then I used it in my site redesign, which conveniently used a font Kernest was already using.

Kernest's weaknesses on the site are offset by its strengths in implementation and ease of use. Typekit, however, uses javascript for DRM when it isn't really necessary. Kernest uses a server-side whitelist solution which is much cleaner to load.

So there's my pitch for Kernest. Typekit seemed cool at first, but the cost struck me as too high and I'd rather use javascript for functionality, not design.

I looked into using @font-face for a project a week or two ago.

I ended up not using it because most fonts (i tried a lot) looks really bad anti-aliasing turned off; especially at the small (body-text) font sizes.

If only there was a way to tell the browser to only use the fonts if anti-aliasing was turned on

So which browsers and OSs are supported then? Because when I go to browse fonts I just see a whole load of Arial :p

A search function would be good too, the question I want answered is can I do my existing design using it.

I made a point on their GetSatisfaction feedback page, and will state again, if they can somehow lay down the cash for one or two of the most-used designer fonts, say, Helvetica Neue, or Gotham, or Garamond, then designers and web designers would flock to this service. Additionally, if they were to add a few of the popular-to-designer bit type faces, such as any of the FFF fonts, then again, designers would eat that up. Designers just have their standard kit of faces they turn to.

I miss information on how it works. Does it render fonts as images? Or maybe it uses some new HTML 5 feature? Or it requires an ActiveX plugin?

The server's falling down, but that looks beautiful, and quite useful.

They need to concentrate on making this work in closed environments where the developer/designer is certain that a compatible browser is being used; it will be many years before someone can use this for a practical application on the "open web."

Basically, iPhone-specific websites could make them all of their money, if they could make it work correctly with the browser (the front page looked fine, but the font sample page seemed to be a bit off). In fact, I would use and pay for this myself if it were marketed as an enhanced typography library for iPhone web apps.

There are several outfits trying to do this lately, but I just can't see these services gaining much traction.

They seem to exist to provide for the whims of font foundries who want to eat their cake and have it, in a way that no-one else gets. The stock images and icons on web sites can all be downloaded and used on other sites illegally as well, yet in practice this hasn't killed either the stock suppliers or the web in general!

Meanwhile, why would any professional web design firm recommend to their clients that they commit to writing a blank cheque, indefinitely, after the design contract is finished, (edit: and relying on a service outside of their control!), just to keep their site up and running and looking correct?

It's not as if there aren't alternatives for the cases where use of non-web-safe fonts makes a difference: we've been using custom images, even dynamic image replacement techniques, since forever. These don't really scale from occasional uses like headings and pull quotes to the full volume of body text, but for typical body text sizes using custom fonts is unlikely to gain any useful improvement anyway; even most pro-grade don't have the kind of hinting that the Microsoft and Apple standard fonts have.

So I have to wonder, why should the world bend to the font foundries' obsolete business models, when there are numerous alternative technologies available that get the same wow factor where it counts, there are many free fonts available (including a few genuinely of professional quality these days), and there just isn't much of a compelling selling point from the client's point of view to signing up for fonts-as-a-service?

Typekit is an excellent service. It allows designers to accomplish some awesome clean looking designs.

Example: http://bobulate.com/

Chrome currently does not support @font-face by default so this does not work on chrome for me unless i run it with a command line option to enable it.

This looks awesome and these launch offers are -way- cheaper than the normal prices on a per month basis. How long are these gonna last?

The biggest problem with this is that your own web site/app depends on some other web site being up. Or am I reading this wrong?

i love the idea, but there's no way i'm going to pay for the service until it supports IE, at least (i can accept that it doesn't work on chrome and the like, for now).

i hate IE, but its still a huge chunk of the browser segment.