Good News For All Us Font Freaks

I grouse frequently and often about how limited the selection of “core” fonts is with which to use in web design. Some say there are 16. Some say there are only 3. 16 or 3 it’s bound to come up with a client that the font you’ve used is “too clinical”,”schoolkid-like”,”typewriter-ish”,”dull”,”really bad”,”bad, awful, not at all what I want”…etc. You bow your head in shame. After all, if you were any kind of good web designer you could make the font pretty,couldn’t you?

Actually… I have a ka-ba-ja-zillion fonts downloaded to my computer so yes I can use any freaking font I want and I will see it in the design. You will not. You will see a default list of fail safe, dull, old universal core fonts. If everyone downloaded 10 fonts a day for the rest of their lives there would still be a big fat chance that the font you are using isn’t going to be in their computer. ‘Cause of all the fonts there are in the world.

Give us web designers a little bitty break,puleese. The reason we stoop so low as Arial is because it is the number one font everyone is bound to have. We might get all crazy and try to use Century Gothic because maybe 65% of the internets have it loaded but the rest sees Arial and thinks it sucks.

sIFR to the rescue. And if you use WordPress,Alejandro U. Alvarez to the rescue.

You should take a look at this picture,
otherwise you may have trouble understanding what the name field means or what selector means.

Also you should know that his plugin uses sIFR version 2 so you cannot use Ian Purton’s online conversion tool.

Alejandro included a command script you can run in Flash to automatically get your fonts and make swfs but I found it easier to download my own copy of sIFR package version 2.0.2. I opened sifr.fla in Flash, selected my font and then exported the movie in mac flash version 8. I closed sifr.fla without saving the changes.

I uploaded the font.swf to the right folder in the custom fonts plugin folder and I edited the custom_font.php file as instructed. His instructions are on the plugin page,so scroll down to find them.

I tried to do it his way with command> run command script he provided but when I used the produced swf I got this output on my page titles “text made by sifr version 3” or something similar. This just meant I was using incompatible versions of either mac flash or sIFR! Yeah, as simple as that.

I am not as nifty as Ian Purton but if you need a font you can email me the .ttf or .ot font you would like converted to a .swf and I will make you one in Flash. It takes about a minute to do. i may even already have it.

I should tell you that I am using Baar Sophia but what you are probably seeing is Trebuchet MS or Helvectica. And if you haven’t got those fonts you’re probably seeing Times New Roman.

Or *censored* Arial.