Site Support for Local Fonts

sankar · March 16th, 2004, 03:59 AM

Hi,
I have a site that has a separate version for different regional languages. All I want to do is, when any user clicks on any of these regional version, a font gets installed on the user's computer and the website content gets visible in that font only. These font files are located in one of my web-server folder.
Pls note,I cannot use third-party components

Sankar Sengupta
Striving for the BEST

Imar · March 16th, 2004, 04:16 AM

You can't really have the browser download a font automatically in a way that works cross browser, especially not without using third party components.

I believe Netscape worked on this a long time ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if IE had it's own proprietary stuff too to change fonts, but nothing will really work using modern Web standards.

Your best bets are to offer your visitor the chance to download a font (lots of hassle for your client), or to adjust your site to fonts you're likely to expect on most systems connected to the Web (much easier to do). Alternatively, you can use graphics for some of the parts of your site, so you can influence the font at design-time.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

sankar · March 16th, 2004, 05:13 AM

Thanks Imar,
So you are saying I can't do this without using a component the way I am expecting, right? What if I use an exe file to do this job, instead of a dll, as I have permission to execute exe files on my site? If that is the case, can you give me some piece of samples as to how do I go about this?
Thx in adv.

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Imar
You can't really have the browser download a font automatically in a way that works cross browser, especially not without using third party components.

I believe Netscape worked on this a long time ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if IE had it's own proprietary stuff too to change fonts, but nothing will really work using modern Web standards.

Your best bets are to offer your visitor the chance to download a font (lots of hassle for your client), or to adjust your site to fonts you're likely to expect on most systems connected to the Web (much easier to do). Alternatively, you can use graphics for some of the parts of your site, so you can influence the font at design-time.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Sankar Sengupta
Striving for the BEST

Imar · March 16th, 2004, 05:35 AM

Worse, I am saying that you can't probably do it *with* a component either. At least not in a way that works in all browsers and doesn't require all kinds of nasty DOM checking.

Take a look here: http://www.truedoc.com. This is a tool that will download a little application for your browser, so fonts can be downloaded and displayed on the browser. As you can see from their browser support (Netscape 4.x), you can see that this is an "old shool" methodology. AFAIAC, embedding fonts isn't a good practice. You never know whether it will work or not, so you don't know how your page will end up.
So, personally I would use graphics for branding images (I can't image the Coca-Cola logo in Times New Roman), and stick to a widely available font in other places in your site.

If you're site displays in another language, e.g. Hindi and its's important your visitors have the font, ask them to download it....

There may be other solutions than Truedoc as well, but I couldn't find any in my bookmarks anymore. I guess I dropped the idea of font embedding a long time ago ;)

I am not sure what your plans with the .exe are. You can execute as many exes on the server, but they will never reach the client. They may output HTML to the client, but that's about it.....

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Imar · March 16th, 2004, 05:48 AM

And in addition to this, there is also an IE only solution, called The Web Embedding Fonts Tool (WEFT)

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...ft3/weft00.htm

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

sankar · March 16th, 2004, 06:25 AM

Thanks again,
I was wondering how this can be achieved in cross-browser platform. I would like to request you to have a look at the site http://www.wbgov.com/e-gov/IntroJpgNew.htm
This is an Indian Government site, government of the state West Bengal(WB). The local language is Bengali, so the site has an bengali version also. This page has a welcome button to its right, and another button where welcome is written in Bengali, the local language. These are images alright. But the moment you click on this 'Bengali' button, you will be informed that a font is getting installed and after few minutes the site gets displayed in local language. Here you will see that drop-down list-boxes are also populated using this local language. Pls have a look at this and let me know what do you think how they have done this.
Sorry, but I need to have a solution something like this only, so asking help from experts like you.
Thx in adv.

Sankar Sengupta
Striving for the BEST

Imar · March 16th, 2004, 06:45 AM

I am definitely not an expert in this font area.

Anyway, when I go that page, I get a download dialog that refers to http://www.modular-infotech.com/

Did you check out their Web site for more info? It looks to me that they are the ones that are the experts in this area....

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.