[OpenFontLibrary] Fonts on the new site

[Ben Weiner]

Hi all,

Dave Crossland wrote:
> 2008/11/22 Ben Laenen <benlaenen at gmail.com>:
>   
>> I have one issue with the CSS of the new OFLB site
>> (http://openfontlibrary.fontly.org/openfontlibrary_files/skins/oflb-skin/css/style.css):
>>
>>        font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, "Helvetica Neue Light", "Nimbus
>> Sans", Helvetica, Arial;
>>
>> Does it make sense to start of with commercial and expensive fonts (of
>> which I'm sure 99% of the visitors won't have anyway) on a Free font
>> site?
>>     
Not at all, but we were saved by the bell as Dave explained ;-)
> I've updated this to:
>
> font-family: "Nimbus Sans", HelveticaNeue-Light, "Helvetica Neue
> Light", Helvetica, Arial;
>   
<snipped>
> Perhaps Ben W and James W can comment.
>   

I would be happier to font-link from OFLB, obviously, as that's part of 
the eat-your-own-dogfood approach we're trying to take. And we are 
focusing hard on font linking, which is currently a live issue in the 
browser world.

Nimbus Sans as-is is in a format that I don't think works on OSX. I have 
not chewed over the consequences of generating a version that does - 
partly because, lacking a light weight in the free version of the 
typeface, I didn't think it worthwhile.

I would be happier using DejaVu (serif), which has a bigger range of 
weights, but then we reach the problem that in Safari (presumably in any 
current webkit browser) you have to split the one typeface into separate 
font families if you want to use more than four weights. So to use 
DejaVu in our design, were we to accommodate the only shipping 
font-linking browser, we'd have to cook up some rather nasty CSS. Thus 
failing to practice well what we preach.

Tricky one for now; AFAIK Firefox 3.1 does not have this problem.

We think it is essential that the new site has good typography so that 
it will be credible to graphic designers, so we can't risk degrading too 
ungracefully for anyone with a Mac and a copy of Safari...

Cheers,
Ben