5 ms·

Yet again I'll have to use someone's arbitrary font-serving service instead of using @font-face and hosting the fonts myself. I'd really prefer to just purchase

Yet again I'll have to use someone's arbitrary font-serving service instead of using @font-face and hosting the fonts myself. I'd really prefer to just purchase the font, but this is surely more profitable. Also, check out this section for a laugh: http://www.typography.com/cloud/how-it-works/#the-delivery-agent http://www.typography.com/cloud/how-it-works/#the-delivery-a... . "It constructs an application capable of recognizing requests from different browsers." Apparently a few lines of CSS counts as "an application" these days.

rjvin 13y ago
You can absolutely just buy the font and serve it yourself: http://www.typography.com/fonts/whitney/styles/whitneyscreensmartpro/latin-x http://www.typography.com/fonts/whitney/styles/whitneyscreen... edit: ok, I didn't read their EULA. Nevermind.
- garrettdimon 13y ago
  Technically, you may be able to, but legally, the license doesn't allow for it.
- tptacek 13y ago
  And then you can wait for the cease and desist letter to arrive, since none of H+FJ's typography.com faces are licensed for use on the web outside their service.
- ernesth 13y ago
  The price for "serving it yourself" on the web is not listed: if you serve it yourself, more than 50 computers will be able to download it!
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I don't think there is a price for "serving it yourself on the web"; outside of a small number of early beta users, the professional websites you saw using H+FJ fonts were probably using image replacement.
tptacek 13y ago
None of the major foundries are OK with you embedding fonts into web pages by publishing their fonts as resources on the web, there to be downloaded by anyone else who wants to compose documents with those fonts.
- Historiopode 13y ago
  It seems to me that downloading a subset of a typeface from a webpage would be less practical than downloading an entire collection from a torrent. Concerning the service itself: according to their product page, H&FJ requires you to include a remote stylesheet rather than javascript. I would say this is the "minimum viable evil" if you are striving to centralize distribution of your webfonts; while annoying, there are some advantages for the user (in this case, free Akamai). Edit: I just checked a couple of torrent search engines and, apparently, there are not many up-to-date torrents for H&FJ typefaces. In hindsight, I suppose that the population of individuals who are likely to share files illegally and that of professional/dedicated designers have very little overlap.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The people who download fonts from torrents know what they're doing. If it was trivial to copy fonts off of web pages, people would routinely violate H+FJ's license without even realizing it; H+FJ would be in the unpleasant position of having to police the Internet and educating all those people who'd be surprised to hear that the one piece of markup / technology they can't crib from another site is the font, but only if it's an H+FJ font, and...
  - mkehrt 13y ago
    I may or may not have had no trouble whatsoever pirating an enormous variety of fonts off a website I found with a quick google search. Maybe torrents just aren't where they are?
    - praxeologist 13y ago
      In my experience too, websites with direct downloads are better. It is easy to make webfonts even when FontSquirrel marks the font for copyright too if you have a software like FontLab. Just remove the designer/copyright information in the Font Info menu.
tankbot 13y ago
I can't speak as to how this service works, but web fonts, in general are really neat. For example: The ability to specify a font subset, so that only the 7 glyphs you actually use in your company name can be downloaded instead of the entire font, changing the data moved for just that single transaction from several megabytes to a few kilobytes. Extrapolate that to a handful of faces and a few hundred thousand visits and it adds up pretty quick. Not to mention you can now stop using Comic Sans. :o)

rjvin 13y ago

You can absolutely just buy the font and serve it yourself: http://www.typography.com/fonts/whitney/styles/whitneyscreensmartpro/latin-x http://www.typography.com/fonts/whitney/styles/whitneyscreen... edit: ok, I didn't read their EULA. Nevermind.

garrettdimon 13y ago
Technically, you may be able to, but legally, the license doesn't allow for it.
tptacek 13y ago
And then you can wait for the cease and desist letter to arrive, since none of H+FJ's typography.com faces are licensed for use on the web outside their service.
ernesth 13y ago
The price for "serving it yourself" on the web is not listed: if you serve it yourself, more than 50 computers will be able to download it!
- tptacek 13y ago
  I don't think there is a price for "serving it yourself on the web"; outside of a small number of early beta users, the professional websites you saw using H+FJ fonts were probably using image replacement.

tptacek 13y ago

None of the major foundries are OK with you embedding fonts into web pages by publishing their fonts as resources on the web, there to be downloaded by anyone else who wants to compose documents with those fonts.

Historiopode 13y ago
It seems to me that downloading a subset of a typeface from a webpage would be less practical than downloading an entire collection from a torrent. Concerning the service itself: according to their product page, H&FJ requires you to include a remote stylesheet rather than javascript. I would say this is the "minimum viable evil" if you are striving to centralize distribution of your webfonts; while annoying, there are some advantages for the user (in this case, free Akamai). Edit: I just checked a couple of torrent search engines and, apparently, there are not many up-to-date torrents for H&FJ typefaces. In hindsight, I suppose that the population of individuals who are likely to share files illegally and that of professional/dedicated designers have very little overlap.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The people who download fonts from torrents know what they're doing. If it was trivial to copy fonts off of web pages, people would routinely violate H+FJ's license without even realizing it; H+FJ would be in the unpleasant position of having to police the Internet and educating all those people who'd be surprised to hear that the one piece of markup / technology they can't crib from another site is the font, but only if it's an H+FJ font, and...
- mkehrt 13y ago
  I may or may not have had no trouble whatsoever pirating an enormous variety of fonts off a website I found with a quick google search. Maybe torrents just aren't where they are?
  - praxeologist 13y ago
    In my experience too, websites with direct downloads are better. It is easy to make webfonts even when FontSquirrel marks the font for copyright too if you have a software like FontLab. Just remove the designer/copyright information in the Font Info menu.

tankbot 13y ago

I can't speak as to how this service works, but web fonts, in general are really neat. For example: The ability to specify a font subset, so that only the 7 glyphs you actually use in your company name can be downloaded instead of the entire font, changing the data moved for just that single transaction from several megabytes to a few kilobytes. Extrapolate that to a handful of faces and a few hundred thousand visits and it adds up pretty quick. Not to mention you can now stop using Comic Sans. :o)