Fonts

DRAFT

Once upon a time, comic sans was the most exciting font on the web. No longer.

Procuring Fonts


TODO: licensing, purchasing model


Providers

Free

Kalmuna Accounts

All usernames and passwords for these accounts are in LastPass.

Paid (no Kalamuna account)


Using Web Fonts

 For Drupal

Probably the easiest way to do this in Drupal is to use the @font-your-face module. It provides an admin interface for managing web fonts and has support for the following 3rd party providers:

If you prefer to include 3rd party web fonts without @font-your-face module you should be able to find instructions on how to include the web font from your css at each of the respective 3rd party websites.

Here is how you can load this in with less overhead via a preprocess function: http://cheekymonkeymedia.ca/blog/drupal-planet/how-add-typekit-fonts-your-drupal-website :

/**
* Implements template_preprocess_html().
*/
 
function MYTHEME_preprocess_html(&$variables) {
 //Adds typekit js to theme
 drupal_add_js('//use.typekit.net/wje3ojf.js', 'external');
 drupal_add_js('try{Typekit.load();}catch(e){}', 'inline', 'page_bottom');
}


Self hosting

If you have a copy of a web font that you want to use and intend to host it along with the site then you can use a Sass mixin like the following:

@mixin set-font-face($font-family, $file-path, $weight: normal, $style: normal ) {
  @font-face {
    font-family: $font-family;
    src:
      url(#{$file-path}.woff) format('woff2'), /* Chrome 26+, Opera 23+ */
      url(#{$file-path}.woff) format('woff'); /* Chrome 6+, Firefox 3.6+, IE 9+, Safari 5.1+ */
    font-weight: $weight;
    font-style: $style;
    font-stretch: none;
  }
}

(info) note that EOT and SVG format fallbacks are no longer required


Web fonts in email

via http://templates.mailchimp.com/design/typography/

While web fonts may be common in traditional website design, in the world of HTML email, they’re experimental at best. If you want to work on the ragged edge of email technology, however, you do have a few options. A (really) small number of email clients support the @import* CSS at-rule, which allows the use of web fonts provided through services like Google Web Fonts or Fontdeck.

  • Outlook2000 (crazy, we know)

  • iOS Mail

  • Apple Mail

  • Android (default client, not Gmail)

  • Thunderbird

Note: @font-face and <link> really only work on Apple desktop and mobile clients.


Icon web fonts

Thiago de Mello Bueno (Unlicensed)'s little piece of magic to combine your icons into a web font: https://github.com/madeofpeople/makesvgfont

However, you should probably never do this. The main argument of this approach was to improve performance on page load by reducing the number of requests that the browser would need to make for all the needed files. However, with the adoption of HTTP/2 browsers now can bundle a bunch of file requests in a single connection, and don't have to wait for the server to respond to each individually. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36517829/what-does-multiplexing-mean-in-http-2



Resources