What happens if the fonts I use for my design are not on the PC of my visitors .. ? Is there no way to display the same fonts if fonts are not found on the PCs of people viewing the website ?
If the font isn't installed on the P.C it will go to the next font you have specified in your CSS, and if you haven't specified I guess it goes to some sort of default maybe Arial. Inside your CSS you can specify more than 1 font, so that if the user doesn't have it it will fallback onto the 2nd font specified and so on. Although I think there is a way to link to a font inside the CSS, so that even if the user hasn't got it it can be displayed, if you upload the font to your server. I've never really looked into it but i'm sure something like this exists.
exactly .. that is what I need to know .. how can I look up at the server for the fonts if the fonts are not on the machine..
font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; Code (markup): Use this, it will look for fonts from left and if it is not found on pc then right one if not then right one.
i think you cant use fonts not exist on the visitor system, you need to use the standard fonts or else you have to save what you need as a picture. and this is not a good idea sometimes.
If the font family is not found on visitor's computer, the browse will "explain" the html code(font family) with default font family. It depend on the browse and OS.
I just found this article - http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/getting_started/article.php/3479401 looks helpful to me.. ur thoughts ?
If you really need to do it, it can be done with a combination of Javascript and Flash, but it is semi-advanced. Research SIFR
You can also use image replacement to a degree. I've been playing with replacing large sections of text using nothing but images just because I have an inherent distrust of flash. http://battletech.hopto.org/experimental/dynafont/template.html as the directory name implies, this is strictly experimental. I'm coming to the conclusion that I would not use it for body text, but I may consider using it for headers. Generally though, going nuts over artsy-fartsy fonts for large content areas is an accessability /FAIL/. People come to your site to read content in a clean consistant font, not to blow bandwidth on some artsy font that they might not even find legible.
In Deathshadow's case, no. Since it is all actually PLAIN TEXT, so search engines can read it fine. An image is just loaded over with JS.
and the same could be said about SiFR. In both cases the page is built with normal text, you then use javascript to not so much replace that text, as to put an image or flash OVER the text hiding it. As such, the text is still there on the page. Since search engines don't usually run javascript to check for client generated content in the first place, these methods have no impact on how search engines see the page. This is the advantage of applying this via javascript - and the core of any good scripting. When you write something in javascript it should ENHANCE a page, but if scripting is not available the page should still be usable and present the user with something. It's called graceful degredation, and is why most of the pages I write can be tested in any combination of script on/off, images on/off and css on/off and still be functional/useful to the end user.