Google Font Directory

https://code.google.com/webfonts

by albertzeyer • 16 years ago

69 23 16 years ago

code.google.com

sushi2• 16 years ago

Google Web Fonts or @font-face are great leap towards better web typography but sadly that's not the only piece of puzzle that needs to be solved.

Every OS, and every browser on that OS renders text differently. Read this for more on that: http://24ways.org/2009/real-fonts-and-rendering

I recently wrote a silly article, mainly to see how the typography will shape the whole feel of the webpage at http://www.sushaantu.com/moustache.html It looks awesome to me on my Ubuntu Chromium 7 but sucks on Firefox 3 of Windows and OSX.

Google Font Directory is indeed a great thing to make web little more beautiful but we need support from OS and browsers as well which are making steady pace.

ugh• 16 years ago

That looks great on OS X and Safari but the fake italics are just wrong. Don’t know why you would say that it sucks.

– edit: Ah, that font doesn’t have a italic or bold variant, that explains it. Now I don’t know what could possibly be wrong with the rendering in OS X.

sushi2• 16 years ago

I'm glad it doesn't suck on your browser :)

Sephr• 16 years ago

In Firefox 4 and IE9, the much smoother Windows DirectWrite API is used. In Firefox 4, you need to toggle a gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled preference in about:config though.

RossM• 16 years ago

I understand why they'd make it optional (in the Firefox way of 'if you know about it you can enable it') but why not enable it automatically on platforms that support it?

shortformblog5• 16 years ago

Why haven't they gotten the League of Moveable Type on board here?

http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/

Seriously, Chunk Five and League Gothic would be some great additions to this list.

alexkiwi• 16 years ago

http://typekit.com has some excellent fonts, I use Museo all day, but they just added Adobe

shortformblog5• 16 years ago

Agreed... the thing with League of Moveable Type is that the fonts are open-source, which is why they'd be perfect for Google's thing.

jlees2• 16 years ago

We're reaching out to a number of open source font developers so I bet they have been contacted. I'll inquire. I think the current priorities are international language fonts actually, but other beautiful fonts are still welcome.

shortformblog5• 16 years ago

Thanks for the insight; that clears up a lot.

jbrun• 16 years ago

These do not work in IE! I tried.

mralbie• 16 years ago

My favorite place for this kind of thing is font squirrel.

wwortiz• 16 years ago

The advantage of this is that google provides the bandwidth, all they need is more fonts for this to be useful.

madh• 16 years ago

Here's a handy flowchart of @font-face scenarios: http://typophile.com/node/70216

listic• 16 years ago

Artemy Lebedev on Google Font Directory:

"This is, unfortunately, total f--kup.

Alas, besides Apple, all consortiums and big companies totally lack font culture. Microsoft is getting on a bit better - the fonts they ship are good by themselves, - but all the same they f--k up ratserizing and typography in the system.

To make sure of this, it takes only to open the same page on Mac, PC and some Linux. The question will stand no longer.

Google traditionally had failed at design. Founders’ standard of ideas doesn’t exceed American office aesthetics. Hence various holiday pictures, hence shadow under the logo, hence given fonts. All of them are done by the standard of free font collections and present samples of extremely low quality. Namely student’s amateur crap.

Fonts are so horrible, that I just want to sit down, cover my face with my hands and cry helplessly. As it will circulate million-strong, people will think that you can do it like this. These fonts will be used.

(Cries)"

translation by me, original: Business Lynch, 24 May 2010 (http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/business-lynch/2010/05/24...)

Artemy Lebedev is a founder and art director of the most prominent design studio in Russia, known for their attention to typesetting.

Art.Lebedev Studio have on their site a running daily feature called Business Lynch, where since September 2006 they do review and critique of one specimen of design, submitted by the site's readers. Reviews are done in informal manner and widely range in style.

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

Fonts looks much better here on ubuntu then on the macbook air I have around. To each his own.

jlees2• 16 years ago

That article's totally backwards. The rendering is nothing to do with Google (unless you're viewing on Chrome :P). Microsoft has a fairly good font group internally and has made some great progress.

Google is just getting started (I'm part of the fonts effort there) and there are fairly respected designers involved in the whole effort. Without buying in licenses it will take some time to reach a certain quality level but a lot of the fonts provided are high quality and have received praise as such - the quote implies they're all Wingdings :/

trustfundbaby• 16 years ago

I was a big fan when this was first announced, but the selection of fonts is puny ... try typekit instead. http://typekit.com/ ... there's a free plan.

heresy• 16 years ago

Why are all the fonts on that page rendered so badly?

It's artifacts all the way down.

(Chrome 7 on Windows 7)

shortformblog5• 16 years ago

No offense, but because you're using Windows 7.

It's mentioned later in the thread, but this image explains everything: http://typophile.com/node/70216

Short answer: Windows has always had crappy font rendering. (Though some people like/prefer it for whatever reason. I'm not one of them.) It's going to get better eventually – look at the image for IE9 and FF 3.7.

You may also want to be sure you have Cleartype on.

Maybe it's my own status as a Mac user, but it's almost distracting to see the differences in font rendering between platforms.

shortformblog5• 16 years ago

To the person who downvoted me because I dared criticized Windows' font rendering: That's not nice. :/

Google Font Directory

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