Dynamic Fonts

Using OpenType and TrueDoc to Define the Fonts in Your Page

One of the most common uses of graphics on Web pages are to create titles with the specific fonts you want displayed on your Web site. The problem is, when you use a font tag or the font-family CSS property, you have to hope that your readers have the fonts that you specify on their computer.

For example, a company might have a font developed for them for use as their official typeface, say "Company Font A". In order to get the most return on the investment of creating a new font, the company wants the Web site to be displayed using that font. The Web developers could use the CSS property : font-family : Company Font A.
But this would only work on those computers that had that font installed. In other words, only corporate computers would see the font.

Enter Dynamic Fonts

Using dynamic fonts or embedded fonts, a Web developer can use any font they wish to (Note: not all fonts can be embedded or used as dynamic fonts) on their Web pages and have them embedded so their readers can view them as well.

Change Your Fonts and Change Your Attitude

One of the sweetest things to come out of the HTML 3.0 specification was the ability to use the font of your choice on your Web pages. This ability to use "dynamic fonts," or fonts which are downloaded from the server to your browser, has enabled developers to create and use fonts on their pages which create a whole new look from the same old text. So that you can see that this is just inline text, drag your mouse across the text. You can cut and paste it just like any other text on the page.

On the other hand, this is the text you'll find to be dynamic if you are using MSIE . That's because the manner in which you use dynamic fonts is, are you ready for this, different than the way you do it for Netscape.

Now, before you go uploading your favorite fonts to your Web server, understand that you're not going to be using normal font sets, but rather compacted, formatted font sets. These font sets are created by using special software which does the compacting and formatting, and as of the time this article was written