Google Font Api

wac

Senior Member
A friend showed me this Google feature that lets you use any font from the Google database on your own website. Essentially a small piece of code inserted into your site loads the font up when the page is accessed. The trouble there is only a very small amount of available fonts.

So my question is, if it's possible to call upon these Google fonts, is there not some simple way of uploading the necessary fonts to your own server for the page to access?
 
Of course it is :) You need them in special formats though, and of course professional font’s licenses do not allow it, because anyone could download the font then ... For those you have to pay for a service that lets you link them, much like Google does with those free fonts. But at fontsquirrel you can pick a free font, download the required formats, put them on your own webspace and link to them via @font-face :)
 
hot dog! this looks like the way forward. That being said it seems like this should be in wider use. I mean you've always been able to export fonts with Flash sites, even more so you can only export the necessary characters to save on bandwidth. Surely if you own the font you should be able to use it in this way with the catch that people arent able to harvest it easily. Anyway for the time being this font face solution is hot peas.
 
In all fairness, wac, you're kind of late to the party. :)
Font-face already has become widely used for the last six months or so, if not longer. There are also services similar to the Google Font API like Typekit and Fontdeck which do allow you to use some commercial fonts, and they have been gaining popularity as well.

And like Minimalist said, Fontsquirrel offers a wide variety of free fonts available for @font-face. They also have a generator which you can use to convert fonts on your computer into the correct formats, but I'm unclear on the licensing regulations for that.
 
Back
Top