Rag Times

nostrich:

The one where an article extolling the virtues of @font-face makes a pretty good argument against it by completely ignoring how it will look for Windows users. (The screenshot appears to help, but check it out in Windows if you have access.) Enabling Cleartype — not enabled by default, not even there as far as most users are concerned — helps, enabling “standard” aliasing just makes it worse.

I fail to see how this technology is going to be any different from CSS 3, or HTML 5, or even plain old CSS 2: fucking mind-blowing in the right hands, and a complete, unmitigated disaster in everyone else’s. So basically, all the web designers and typography nuts will have awesome looking websites, some other people’s websites will be a disgusting mish-mash of Roman, Blackletter, all caps, small-caps, monospaced and unlicensed fonts, and everyone else will continue to use Verdana or Helvetica.

Net gain: ?

Net gain: same as it ever was. People who know their shit will make some nice things. People who don’t understand it will make shitty things. People who know how to write well, like yourself, write good stories. People can’t write well will write LiveJournals. People who will now use this technology to make a mishmash of blackletter and novelty fonts are the same people who currently spruce up their pages with Comic Sans or Impact.

Along the same lines, the new @font-face fonts look shitty in Windows, but then the old web standards also look shitty in Windows, because it’s the same rendering. Incremental change on the internet always has been like this, but we are clearly in a better place today than we were in 1999.

And finally, I feel the need to point out that @font-face is a part of CSS3, not separate from it.