Effective Site Design - Choosing The Appropriate Font
There are several different ways to attempt to work around these limitations and in this article, I will discuss some of them and then discuss the newest ways to work around font problems.
As you will see, the new way is easy and free while the older ways have many drawbacks.
Image Replacement covers a wide range of related techniques.
It was the original attempt to replace text while avoiding limits in styling and appearance.
Its only advantage is that it is low fidelity to implement and use.
Its disadvantages include problems with accessibility, trouble displaying more than one line of text, issues with producing a new image for each heading, and caching.
Add to this the facts that reuse is limited and it is not scalable and you can see why it shouldn't be your number one choice.
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement uses Adobe Flash's features by embedding fonts in flash movies.
This technique has now been around for 5 years and is the most common way to customize fonts.
When using this method you can even make lettering linkable and have the ability to select it.
Unfortunately, your web site visitors will have to keep active versions of both Flash and JavaScript on their computers for it to display.
The latest and greatest way to replace text uses some of the better ideas from Scalable Inman Flash Replacement.
The most important thing to note here is that you will not have to worry about Flash being installed on your visitors' computers.
There are two similar methods that work in much the same way.
They are called cufon and typeface.
js.
These two methods have free online tools that allow you to change your font into a JavaScript file.
After you have done this, you simply link them to your web page and they will be displayed anytime JavaScript is installed (most computers have working copies of JavaScript).
Although is true that most browsers can handle both Flash and JavaScript, it is also a fact that the iPhone and android phones are unable to use Flash to render web content.
Most webmasters and site designers will not use Scalable Inman Flash Replacement for this reason alone.
If you cannot reach the smartphone users then you are missing out on a very large crowd of potential site visitors and customers.
This is all very simple to do without any expensive software.
You simply go grab the code, plug it into your website and you're up and running in no time.
To learn more, do a search on Google for the typeface and cufon websites and info.