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It once was the case that any font used in html was directly dependent on the browser-safe fonts that were available on the visitor’s machine. If they didn't have the font installed, then the visitor would not see the design exactly as the designer intended it. To keep their designs as consistent as possible, many web designers stick to using the same browser-safe fonts over and over again. Browser-safe fonts have become very familiar to us all, as practically every website one encounters (including this one) deploys them.
But where's the fun in that? Why must one stick to creating an image in photoshop if they want their page titles to appear in "Gill Sans" for example? Wouldn't it be better if you could put your fonts in a folder on your server and then reference that folder in your cascading style sheet? Now you can! Really! I couldn't believe it myself and after reading "CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing" on A List Apart, I immediately set out to research and test this new method and was both pleasantly suprised by the results and excited about the ramifications.
Yes. Ramifications. There's always a catch. For now, you have to use Prince6 to generate a web-based pdf through css to get the webpage with your font rendered as a pdf.
At this point it's up to us as designers and developers to play with this technology and convince browser makers to add support for web fonts. I suggest we start with Mozilla and try to quickly get IE to fall into line. Because Firefox is open source, it's up to us as developers to get the source, build it, create patches and get them checked into the tree. Who's up to the challenge?
There's also legal issues. It seems you just can't put your copy of Gill Sans on your web server and then reference it in your cascading style sheet because then anyone will be able to download and use or even possibly sell and profit off a font that you distributed. Because Gill Sans is probably intellectual property protected under copyright law, you just might get into trouble for doing this. But many font designers allow their fonts to be used on the web and there are a lot of well-designed fonts out there that you have permission to use.
But why not make your own font. You're a designer too aren't you? Why not create/edit and name your own fonts for your website and put it out there as another open source solution to the "in the box" fonts that are good, but over-used and blah.
Fontlab.com offers many font editors, font converters and font utilities that will help you do things with fonts that you never imagined possible.
Font Editors
First-class typographic tools for Mac and Windows: fontlab font editor tools let you do anything that is possible to do with a font. From TypeTool, their basic font editor, to AsiaFont Studio, the worldwide font editor, Fontlab has a font editor product that suits your needs. Read more...
Font Converters
their universal font converter, TransType, can convert most any font to any platform or font format. Their other font converter products can convert to and from and between bitmap font formats and photofont format. Read more...
Font Utilities
Fontlab font utilities help you do special things with fonts that otherwise would take unusual time and effort .Read more...
View all products, compare them,and buy them online.
Design Carefully
Please keep aesthetics in mind when putting fonts out there for the public to read. Know your audience and try to design fonts that will cater to their personal preferences and needs. Remember, you do not want to turn off your website visitors or make them cringe when they visit your website. Instead, use custom fonts sparingly for headings and titles, and stick to a legible and printable font for your paragraphs.
Happy designing!