Comments on: Adobe & Typekit team up on Web font delivery

By: Alex C

Alex C — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:39:48 +0000

I use the Cufon library, which is free (with properly licensed fonts), and works like a charm. I’d love to use a built-in browser solution, but our organization doesn’t have any budget, so this solution is out.

The best way to entice people to get on board with a technology is to offer it for free, at least for a while, then charge for it; even then, make it free for students/edu orgs. It’s not a matter of making everything free; rather, you’d get more developers to at least try it that way.

For years I wanted to convince my old organization to use Flex, but at $15 grand per CPU (in 2004), there was no way. Then, Adobe/Macromedia came to its senses and at least gave away the SDK for free; now it’s a widely-accepted technology for RIA.

I love Adobe technologies and want to see this succeed; that’s the reason I make this argument. Let developers get their feet wet with it and you’ll be surprised how many will get hooked :)

By: Klas Lundberg

Klas Lundberg — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:08:42 +0000

Very nice, but not free. Conclusion: #fail [Seriously? Everything should be free, and we should "make it up on volume"? --J.]

By: imajez

imajez — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:51:27 +0000

That’s in FF + Opera on PC, not got my Mac with me to test in OSX

By: imajez

imajez — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:50:32 +0000

Kai the body text on your site looks terrible for some reason, as does the headline text. It looks like viewing text on a faulty monitor. You get a brief flash of nicely rendered text, then it is replaced by what I guess is your chosen font.

By: Armand

Armand — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:39:09 +0000

@Allen, Google already has a repository of free fonts, although the selection is pretty limited for now – http://code.google.com/webfonts

If/When your subscription lapses, the site will fallback to whatever font you specified in the font familiy stack in CSS.

Personally, I’d prefer to buy the fonts directly from Adobe for a DECENT fee and host it on my own site. Relying on third-party services always makes me nervous.

By: Armand

Armand — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:34:29 +0000

This is for html only. If you have the Creative Suite, you already have (some|all?) of those fonts so it’s not a problem for flash.

By: Kai Howells

Kai Howells — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:15:23 +0000

This is pretty good. I’ve looked at the trial version of TypeKit when it launched a year ago, but having chosen Myriad for my stock sans-serif company font, there was no incentive to pay for their services.

With this morning’s announcement, I have immediately signed up for the $25/year edition and it took me all of 10 minutes to update my website using the font from Typekit.

Job well done!

By: Allen Cobb

Allen Cobb — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:04:06 +0000

It’s also not clear what happens when my subscription lapses. If I have published sits using Typekit, will they fall back to conventional fonts? Do I have to stay subscribed for the fonts to keep working?

Unfortunately, there is no FAQ on their site, or I wouldn’t be asking so many questions (rhetorically, of course) here.

By: Allen Cobb

Allen Cobb — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:58:32 +0000

After a quick read of the Typekit site, it was still not clear whether I can create multiple webkits per site (or need to), or whether I’m paying only for one webkit at a time, or whether it’s going to be accurately WYSIWYG in Dreamweaver.

It’s also not clear how far-reaching this approach will be. If someone were to publish a public domain or GNU set of delicious fonts, and it really caught on, wouldn’t that eliminate much of the value of Typekit?

By: gh

gh — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:47:33 +0000

can these be used in Adobe Flash created websites, or is this limited to html and css sites?