Any web developers using Cufon here?
Cufon allows you to use a font of your choosing on a page, including fonts that the user doesn't have installed - the only limitation is dealing with licensing of embedded fonts. Cufon doesn't require images or Flash, it relies solely on Javascript to render its fonts converted into its own font format. You can replace any member of the DOM on a page with your Cufon generated font via CSS3 style selectors if you use Prototype or JQuery.
This page is a work in progress, but
here is an example of Cufon in action. The backgrounds for the buttons are background-images, but the text for the buttons (which uses the font "Aldo") is straight HTML. This saved me from having to generate separate buttons in Photoshop - I can create these buttons on the fly using a helper function I created that works as follows in PHP:
Code:
$nmfunctions->makeButton('button text');
The mouseover effect of modifying opacity and the button's click event handler is handled by external Javascript observers using Prototype.
Font embedding is something that will be supported by the major browsers soon, but it relies on actually having the font file available on the server somewhere - this exposes it to theft. Cufon doesn't have this problem and it works in all major browsers today... I think it's brilliant, and it opens up developers to the possibilities of straying away from web friendly fonts without having to rely on images or Flash!
Any Cufon users here?
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