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Typekit First Impressions

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01-Feb-10 00:00
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Elated Elated's avatar Rank: gold
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This is a forum topic for discussing the article "Typekit First Impressions":

http://www.elated.com/articles/typekit-first-impressions/

Simon takes a look at Typekit, a new way to use a wide range of fonts on your website without resorting to images. Does it live up to expectations?
01-Feb-10 18:06
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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Lovely in-depth review Simon - thanks.

To me, Typekit seems like a stop-gap solution until something cleaner (WOFF?) comes along. But it looks like a nice service all the same.

Have you checked out http://fontdeck.com/ and http://www.typotheque.com/ ? These seem to do similar things to Typekit.

BTW I'm surprised how jagged the fonts look in the IE8 and Chrome Windows 7 screenshots. Surely Win 7 can do better than that?!

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02-Feb-10 02:53
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simon simon's avatar Rank: gold
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You'd have thought wouldn't you? Win 7 seems just as awful as XP.

That said, in my experience, Windows people often don't like the OSX font antialiasing at smaller sizes, feeling that it's "fuzzy". Horses for courses.

Simon

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02-Feb-10 04:41
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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From: Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia
There may be a setting somewhere to turn on font smoothing?

Do you run Win 7 in a VM?

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02-Feb-10 06:13
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simon simon's avatar Rank: gold
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No! I got the lovely Scott (www.scottbillings.co.uk) to help with screengrabs on his native Win7 system. We tried all the settings and they all looked terrible =)

Simon

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02-Feb-10 16:41
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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FAIL.

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19-Apr-10 13:59
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Bryan Hoffman Bryan Hoffman's avatar Rank: none
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I was initailly excited to start using typekit on my business site, but found that font rendering on every browser besides Safari was sub par.

I instead went with the @font-face generator at http://www.fontsquirrel.com and am really happy with how the fonts render cross browser/OS.
24-Apr-10 22:58
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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From: Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia
Interesting find Bryan. I found a comparison of Typekit and Font Squirrel here:

http://wynnnetherland.com/2009/11/font-face-off-typekit-vs-font-squirrel/

We actually use Museo Slab via Typekit on www.elated.com. Maybe we could use Font Squirrel instead - Simon, what do you think?

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28-Apr-10 04:17
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simon simon's avatar Rank: gold
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Maybe, yes. The font rendering for Typekit on windows especially is rotten, but then all font rendering is bad on Windows, unless the font squirrel crew have conquered this?

Anyone fancy knocking together some screenshots? You can see how TypeKit renders across browsers/platforms in our "TypeKit: first impressions" article:

http://www.elated.com/articles/typekit-first-impressions/

Simon

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28-Apr-10 09:40
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Bryan Hoffman Bryan Hoffman's avatar Rank: none
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Apparently the issues with Typekit have to do with hinting and preparing fonts specifically for Windows...

Here's a comment (http://spigotdesign.com/design/fontsquirrel-com-saves-font-face/comment-page-1/#comment-1173) from Ethan Dunham of Font Squirrel:

"... the reason why a lot of the [Typekit] fonts look bad is that they leave the hinting up to the designer. They do not prepare the fonts in any way for delivery to Windows. Font Squirrel does its very best to hint the fonts and make them workable in Windows. Rendering will only get better as time goes on."

[Edited by Bryan Hoffman on 28-Apr-10 09:42]
01-May-10 17:46
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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From: Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia
That does sound promising - maybe we'll take a look at FS then, if it has better Windows hinting.

Thanks Bryan. I've just been checking out your blog posts on the topic - very informative!

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01-May-10 19:24
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mguerra79 mguerra79's avatar Rank: bronze
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Hi! So, I came here from the link (tip) from the Elated impressions on the new look. Read the comments, and you are asking for some screen shots? If so, say something, at least my XP 4:3 and Vista 16:9 screens, don't remember the main settings, I will tell later, as I was saying, if so I will send some screenshots of my screens, the way it is rendered at both. I will even try in my installed browsers, hein? How's that?
Yup... Ehehehhe!

Cheers from Portugal (You'll by me a pint if I go to England one of this days, Eheheh! And yes, I don't even drink! Ehehehe!!!)

Márcio Guerra

P.s.- Can we attach something here or do I need to post the images somewhere else?

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07-May-10 01:54
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matt matt's avatar Rank: gold
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From: Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia
Thanks Márcio, that would be great. The forums don't have an image upload feature (yet!), so the best bet would be to upload them to imageshack and post links to the images here.

http://imageshack.us/

Cheers!
Matt

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Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/
07-May-10 10:19
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mguerra79 mguerra79's avatar Rank: bronze
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From: Viseu, Portugal
Hi again!
So, Matt, give me here a few links you would like to see uploaded, some of the pages you would like to see the screenshot, and I will do it.
I have one account there, for my soccer blog, I can use it to upload the pics.

Cheers from Portugal!

Márcio Guerra

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There are only 2 infinite things, the universe and mens stupidity, and Im not shure about the first one!

Or something like it...
By Albert Einstein
17-May-10 14:25
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simon simon's avatar Rank: gold
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Hi Márcio,

You've lost us there! Is there any chance you could just get a headline together and take grabs in as many browsers/platforms as you can?

Simon

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24-Sep-10 08:51
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jnewco81 jnewco81's avatar Rank: none
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Interesting that only Firefox 3.6 on OSX seems to kern the 'W' and 'e' correctly...
24-Sep-10 09:47
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simon simon's avatar Rank: gold
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Hmm, yes, jnewco81, that's true. Good point! And welcome to the forums!

Simon

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