Thanks for the flowers (I'm one of the creators of this little project). Regarding the packaging/download: We'd love to do that but it takes a lot of work technically (and currently this is more of a hobby project) and a lot of work regarding the licensing. Although currently all fonts we have should be free for web use, most of them would probably require additional licensing if we would repackage them. We'd love to do cooperations with services like fontsquirrel (most of our fonts are taken from their site and their excellent webfont packager), but that's future talk.
As a closing remark: It was (and still is) a lot of fun to see so many people care for something we built mostly in 48 hours during the railsrumble 2010. We had some additional iterations after that, but the core still is rumble material.
I shouted out a long "hurray" when I realized what you had done. Is there something I miss, or why all the comments are so cautious? What's wrong with webfonts and the packages you create?
Congrats on the success of the site. I just wanted to say that this is one of my favorite projects from last year's Rumble (also the first RR I didn't compete in).
Maybe something sneaky could be done if the fonts are properly cached, ie. load them AFTER the very first page load on a timer after the page is complete - then the following page loads would have the fonts and/or re-render the page after the load is complete.
I was tinkering with @font-face in a project website I was working on. It's pretty cool, but unfortunately Firefox renders the text using the fallback font until the font specified via @font-face has loaded, resulting in some ugly snapping around as the various fonts are loaded.
I hear its fixed in Firefox 4.0, though, so I think I'm going to hold off on @font-face until its out of beta.
Useless factoid: "fout" means "error" in Dutch. Seems appropiate.
The term 'FOUT' is actually a nod to a ten year old bug named 'Flash of Unstyled Content' (FOUC). It occurred in early versions of Internet Explorer. One would first see unstyled content while the CSS was still loading. http://bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp/
Between modernizr and the google font loading engine it's pretty easy to handle the FOUT issue. It's a pain in the ass, but manageable after a little tinkering.
http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/exljbris/museo-slab which is the link from fontsquirrel gives an alternate pricing of $16 fixed + $8.50 for unlimited websites @font-face. Font-squirrel itself is free (hence their banner) and they link to other fonts that are free for commercial use but their link in this case (and others) shows a clear price and license terms.
Considerably better rates than myfonts.com but still not free-gratis nor free-libre.
Their license is here: http://www.fontspring.com/fontface. You are required to use an alternate rendering of the font with all open-type parts removed that has been subset to the usage required on the site. This makes it quite easy for them to check if you're infringing they just download the font from your site and make sure it meets the license requirements, if not then they can sue you with impunity.
They can probably argue that if the domain holder on whois isn't the licensee then you're also infringing (see license term 6).
In short I don't think the copyright holder for Museo Slab offers their font/typeface for free and suspect anywhere that is offering it or using it is infringing copyright.
I chose Museo Slab as an exemplar, this is probably also true of the other fonts on that site.
2. work with OS distributors (ensure the fonts you sell will be visible on mac, windows, linux, etc) just like adobe did with PS/PDF and macromedia did almost by mistake with flash.
3. charge a flat fee from sites that use your font.
That way is infinitely easier to track than pageviews... and add real value for their online clients. And does not show that you're left behind as the world turns.
if any fount foundry uses that market plan, i require 10% of every character used by their clients, counting the ones deleted by pressing backspace before publishing. Paid in gold doubloons. Delivered on the back of a fully brown donkey.
Thanks for a great tool for designers and free-software people (and their nonzero overlap).
One gripe, though: I wish I could decide by myself which font is suitable for a given purpose. Maybe this should be an option, so you offer only "suitable text fonts", but also give a link to toggle the "all fonts" browser.
In any case, sterling job. I hae learnt a lot about web typography by reading your constructed CSS, and your site is already very useful. Thanks!
There are some seriously great fonts in that collection; I'd like to use some of them offline, but I can't seem to (easily) find a reference to their original sources or download links (I guess not all of them are licensed for non-web-font use, but I'm sure some of them are).
It would be nice, to have a list of all fonts longer than 5 incrementals. As the bundles are more or less random, I don't think that searching is more important than browsing.
Sure they have: you need to use fonts like Verdana, Georgia, and the Microsoft "C" fonts, which were optimised at great expense for on-screen use so they look way better than any of the examples on the site we're discussing, and are widely and immediately available so you don't get the flash of unstyled content during page load.
I'm sorry if that sounds cynical, but the harsh reality is that right now, for professional quality work, those are your options. Downloadable font technology isn't ready for prime-time yet, and it won't be until the fonts have professional quality screen hinting, the browsers actually use those hints in their renderers, the delivery mechanism is fast enough to avoid that FOUC and doesn't eat bandwidth like it's starving (particularly on mobile devices), and the business model/pricing plan for commercial fonts is sane.
For now, I'm afraid @font-face is just an interesting experiment. All it seems to prove so far is that loads of web design bloggers are willing to make their sites actually look worse than they did before, even completely illegible in some widely used OS/browser combinations, if it keeps them on the leading edge.
Likewise, services like Typekit are based on a business model that assumes fonts are worth paying for by the month, unlike any other graphic design work and resources that are licensed for a one-off fee. I think most font foundries still don't get it: as web designers/developers, we do have several alternative techniques for most practical applications, and they are tried, tested, just as accessible to visitors with special needs (and search engine bots), and completely legal without paying for any web font licence or similar nonsense. It would be fascinating to know whether any professional designers actually use this sort of service for work their clients are paying serious money for, or whether it really is restricted to trendy web design blogs and the like. I'm darn sure none of my clients would accept an ongoing fee, on terms I can't control, in perpetuity, just to keep their site from breaking.
Sorry for the negative post, but every time I see one of these stories, I hope that someone has finally produced alternative fonts that are actually good for the advertised use, and so far, every single time I have been disappointed.
(Just to be clear, I am not having a dig at the Awesome Fontstacks site itself. These problems are not their fault.)
As long as font smoothing is enabled, which I believe vista and 7 do by default now, most of the Typekit fonts look ok. I wrote up a blog post not too long ago about dealing with users that don't support font smoothing:
Also, this service would be a lot better if it managed to package + download the font kits for you.