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JessyEzzy

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Using Special Font

I'm working on a web site in which its owners want the text to be displayed in a special font they have for their company, but since users won't have this font installed on their computers they won't see the text in that font, and they refuse the idea of using images for displaying text in that font, so is there any solution for installing the font on the user's pc when he browses the pages?

Thanks.
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TimCottee
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Hi JessyEzzy,

No is the simple answer, for a start installing something on a user's computer from a site without permission would be a big nono! Secondly even if you had the means to obtain the requisite permission you would then have to ensure that the required font was available for all operating systems. Then of course you might run into the fact that the user has javascript disabled or cannot display fancy fonts because they use a plain-text browser.

It sounds like you have already suggested the workaround of using images to display the text, if there are large swathes of such text then this of course would be a problem of itself. However there isn't really a better way. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one as there is no adequate way around it that is 100% effective.

Tim Cottee
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siva350

Images are the only way.

Some companies, who own their own font will post a TrueType font on their website and ask visitors to download and install the file.  This rarely works effectively.

You need to educate your client about how the browser works, and how it is not possible without the visitor actively deciding to install the font just to be able to see the site as the designer intended.

As previously stated, the simplest solution is to use images, or to write their site in Flash and embed the font, or to write the site as a java applet, again with the font embedded.
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ASKER

Ok, I expected that answer, but wanted to make sure.

Thanks.
Ok I'll suggest the Flash or Applet solutions, but don't know if they could work, cos this is a dynamic site, the text to be shown in pages is not static, there are backend forms in which the admin enters the text for each page.

Probably your quickest method is with the font embedded in Flash.

You can read raw text from an external file, using loadVariables in ActionScript, but you'll have to modify the administrators form to write the text in a format required by loadvariables().

Search around for "actionscript loadvariables", "flash embed font", "flash dynamic text" and you should find everything you need.

Good Luck
Ok thanks for the help, now I offered them all the possible solutions (using images, adding an option to download the font or using flash). I'm waiting for their final decision.
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nltech

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You could use CSS 2 @font-face, ( http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-descriptions ), but this is not popularly supported.

See also http://en.selfhtml.org/css/eigenschaften/schrift_datei.htm .

>>they are intended for headings and stuff, not for body text!

That's exactly what they want, they want to use their font for headings & titles, they use "Arial" for the body text.

I'll check your offered links right now.

Thanks.
Thanks for all the helpful replies, I am so sorry for the delay.