It may seem odd to say this, but for the first time web sites can start to use various typefaces/fonts. And this is potentially a huge development in how the Internet can be used. Currently HTML pages cannot refer to fonts that do not already exist on viewers’ computers. For this reason, almost all the text in HTML pages are shown in New Times Roman, Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Courier, and, the big fave, Comic Sans typefaces. To some that believe that this restriction is positive, because it keeps web pages from being filled with funky fonts that diminish readability, this misses a more important point that is not well understood. That point is that the lack of usable fonts has led to worse practices including: burying text in graphics which rarely reflected in HTML (such as in the <img> tag’s alt text), using PDF™ produce documents for WYSIWYG printing (what you see is what you get), burying text in Flash objects, and not being able to have better designed web pages that uses better headline typefaces or more expressive ones. The most obvious stupidity of not allowing more fonts is the lack of the great typeface, Helvetica, and the use of the poor cousins Arial and Verdana instead. For example, see the wonderful documentary, Helvetica, and note that the PBS companion site chose to bury the typeface in graphics, http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/helvetica/ . (even the part of the site that is in text assumes that Arial is the typeface that will be seen by the viewer: the CSS for text is “arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”)
The real revolution is that the web can start to meet what I believe should be a major goal, that all web documents/pages should be both human readable and machine readable/process-able. As long as text is beyond the reach of software, such as screen reading software, search engines, and the new mash-up software systems, a significant promise of the Internet will be stifled. And at the same time opening up the HTML pages to having more typefaces will make pages more accessible for readers. In some cases, the ability to mimic the look of the printed version of official documents, such as legislation, makes the web page more usable. Quite often official documents are locked inside PDF™ versions that can inhibit machine processing. Although PDF™ documents can include a version that is accessible to software/machine processing, this is not always done, and more importantly it detracts from the native version that can be seen in a web browser. And as design can sometimes convey more than the words themselves express, opening up the ability to use any typeface will help. In that case, the software may not always “get” the meaning, but hints can be revealed by the use of different HTML tags and attributes.
The change that is happening is tied up in the move to the CSS3 compliance. Although proprietary methods to use typefaces in some web browsers have been possible for a decade, the poor implementation and lack of an industry wide standard have kept us truly limited to the handful mentioned previously. And there has been resistance from those that market typefaces which fear a loss of revenue from the licensing of typefaces. But I believe that there has been a confluence of two reasons that helped to stifle this advance, lack of the awareness of the importance of this capability for the continued success of the World Wide Web/HTML and the competition of alternate proprietary formats including Adobe’s PDF™ and Flash™, as well as Microsoft’s Silverlight™.
In other areas of competition, HTML has been very successful in holding its own, but its soft underbelly has been its reliance on typefaces. Typefaces have been available for all of the proprietary formats to a much greater extent. However, most web designers just accept the situation and find workarounds to satisfy their clients. And to be fair, sometimes the tools to develop web content that overlaps text and images necessitates using graphics or Flash™. In this case, the use of another standard, SVG might solve this and other design issues. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is dragging in its support for SVG (although it is working hard on its competing, proprietary Silverlight™ format).
There is an exception to my belief that the web can start using various typefaces, and that is the current lack of completed support for CSS3 in the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Whereas, the web browsers, Safari, Chrome and beta versions of Firefox, have adopted the ability to use typefaces through its compliance with the CCS3 standard, Internet Explorer may drag down adoption of fonts. I am hoping that Microsoft will be forced to catch up as web designers start to expand their use of typefaces in actual web sites. I am hoping that Opera’s web browsers will catch up soon too.
Related links:
- Minutes of a discussion of the main players discussing the effort. Note the attempt to make the Microsoft EOT proprietary typeface standard accepted, and the implications of that.
http://www.w3.org/Fonts/Misc/minutes-2008-10 - Wonderful article about the use of typefaces in CSS3
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssatten - The SVG standard
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ - The CSS, CSS2 and CSS3 standards
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ - ACID3 Browser CSS3 Test
http://acid3.acidtests.org/ - Ongoing effort to perfect Firefox use of CSS3 and typefaces
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70132
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