Adding a font...Load times & opinions please
I'm doing a web site for a Victorian Bed & Breakfast and my customer would like to deviate from the standard fonts and go for something more "romantic".
How much will adding an additional font increase the page load time?
When you surf, do you over-ride site defined fonts?
Would you advise for or against this?
Any advice/opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
John 
interwovendesign.com
Quality web site design without the monthly maintenance fees!
AndyB posted this at 11:44 — 6th February 2000.
They have: 344 posts
Joined: Aug 1999
I think that 'adding a font' is something that is presently only supported by MSIE if you mean a font being automatically embedded in a web page.
When a visitor encounters a page that calls for a font not present on their own PC, by default Times New Roman appears (yuck!). I believe that the guaranteed fonts for any PC/Mac are Times, Courier, Arial for PC and Times, Courier, Helvetica for Macs.
One option is to find a popular 'romantic' font (if there is any such thing) and include it in your font commands:
font face=romantic_font, arial, helvetica will look through that list and use the first font it finds installed.
You could offer the visitor the option of downloading 'your' font so the pages 'look their best'. This involves a zipped font file and visitors who can be bothered doing all that. Typically, a 'romantic' font would be in the order of 30-50 kb download. I think this option is a little amateurish.
Best best: use the romantic fonts on graphic buttons and headings for sections of your text and a plain legible font like arial, times, or helvetica for everything else.
vy22 posted this at 13:05 — 7th February 2000.
They have: 296 posts
Joined: Sep 1999
Hey Andy,
I was sure I remember seeing a script somewhere that allowed you to properly embedd the font into the page! Maybe it had something to do with IE5 or something but I am sure it is possible without making the user download the zip. I think Dreamweaver 3 supports the use of external fonts but I could be mistaken.
Whenever I try to use fonts that are not defualt I use them only on gifs and jpg's.
A good option to do is make transparent text as a gif using any font you desire. The only prob is don't make too many or your page lsows right down!
~Vy~
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