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Fonts and Websites
Hi
Apologies for asking for confirmation of this probably imbecelic thinking….
I am generating a website that shall have several less well known sign making fonts shown within it.
Am I right in thinking that, unless the site viewers computer has these fonts installed on their system, then their computer will substitute other random fonts for those I have chosen.
Or will my specifically chosen fonts reappear on their system as bitmaps?.
Of course the website I am designing appears ‘correct’ on my PC cos I already have these fonts installed.
Is the only way of showing these fonts on anybody elses system to convert these into a big bitmap?
Regards
Ian :lol1:
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13 Replies
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Hi Ian,
In Dreamweaver you can edit the font list to add more fonts so I think that you can use any font you wish and it’ll appear the same on any computer. Put up a test page on the net and ask others if they can view it.Cheers John
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Good idea John, thanks…
Will do that ASAP, unfortunately at the moment, since I have recently installed new computer system I cannot publish to my remote website for some obscure reason.
When I get that sorted I’ll do as you suggest.Ian :lol1:
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Hi Ian,
Looks like I was wrong. Google search bring up more info but it looks like its best to use standard fonts or they will change if the viewer hasn’t got that particular font.Cheers John
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Ian, the quickest way to show a sample on your site is to convert the sample text to curves.
There are ways around it, but that is the cheapest.
Coffeecup.com have a program that will convert your font to a web font that everyone can see. Its not dear, and may be a good investment. It includes the program called sIFR Font Maker.
I got a copy myself but literally haven’t had time to play with it..
http://www.coffeecup.com/website-font/? … 7692837117
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The whole point of HTML was that it was platform independent and relied on some of the resources on the viewers computer, hence the list of standard (safe) fonts to be used. Not too bad now with the huge increase in bandwidth and compatibility between platforms, but there are still a lot of users on the Net with old machines………….
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Hi Ian,
Another way round would be if you did your text in say Photoshop or Corel in fact any graphcs program and then saved it as a gif or JPG (Just be careful with the size of files – keep the file size small as possible) and then insert into your website as an image.
I have done this in the past and it works a treat for us.
Hope this helps
Regards
Silvio
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I run into this problem sometimes but I use a programme called wysiwyg Web Builder and it has an option to convert to bitmap on publish. Very good programme for the money – http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com and the support forum is brilliant with the author answering a vast proportion of the questions and experienced users the rest. Very easy to use as well.
Alan D -
Thanks very much folks, a couple of interesting websites there…..
Funny, since I’ve been investigating this I’ve come across a couple of websites where the owners must think they are displaying a range of fonts but are only actually viewing them on their own pc’s, everybody else is seeing converted ones unless by chance they have the fonts on their own system…. :lol1: In fact there is one where the owner must think he/she is displaying 10 obscure fonts and 8 of them have been converted to Arial on my machine.
I guess I will convert the ones I want to show to bitmaps first….
Ian 😀
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If you want to display non standard fonts inline (ie: as part of the content) you can always use SIFR, which basically takes a font and represents in using inline flash by means of a small javascript script.
http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/
Its relatively easy to implement.
Otherwise the other posts are correct, you would need the fonts on your machine – or create small png files of the text you are representing – I have also done this with a combination of GD/Flash and Javascript for an online DIY lettering demo.
Oo
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Our site has all fonts converted to images so anyone can view it. The downside is that search engines cant see an image so it has an adverse affect on listings. The way round it is to find a blank area of your site and put loads of keywords there in the same colour as the background colour. This way google etc can see the words but viewers cant.
It doesnt always work on Firefox though, so make sure you check on both.
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quote Paul Humble:Our site has all fonts converted to images so anyone can view it. The downside is that search engines cant see an image so it has an adverse affect on listings. The way round it is to find a blank area of your site and put loads of keywords there in the same colour as the background colour. This way google etc can see the words but viewers cant.
It doesnt always work on Firefox though, so make sure you check on both.
Hi Paul.
Just an observation mate – but Google frowns upon that tactic and considers it to be considered almost fraudulent due to so many people hiding 1000’s of keywords on adult sites to gain top place listings. (Not that you are frauding – please don’t take this the wrong way!)
The image issue is a problem but correct title and even alt tags can help to displace the loss of content in those areas.
Hope this helps.
Oo
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I’m with owen on that one, I did it on our site for a few years but when we employed a search engine optimisation company they told it was ok to do many moons ago but is seriously frowned upon.
Apparantly the search engines can distinguish "actual" text from just spam words and phrases
Andy
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Yes, the algorithms employed now by search engines such as Google (although closely guarded secrets) are generally recognised as being mainly interested in page title vs page content, followed by content keyword relevance (to the page title and content) and backed up by alt and title tagging on images.
Its a moving set of goalposts that we have to deal with every day (chat.)
Oo
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