We are delighted to announce that our Web FontFonts now include OpenType Layout Features. What’s more we’ve simplified our webfont formats and updated the free Subsetter tool, so you can now customize your Web FontFonts for optimum performance.
OpenType Web Magic
With OpenType Layout Features, you can spice up your web identity through the magic of ligatures, stylistic alternates, figure sets, fractions, small caps and even swashes (if available in the font). Thanks to a selection of 1,600 Web FontFonts, your typographic toolbox is bigger and better equipped than ever before. With beautifully advanced typographic features that are supported by all desktop browsers (except Safari), OpenType gives you endless opportunities to bring type to life.
It may seem like an obvious question, but what are OpenType layout features?
Essentially it’s the ‘technology behind good type’. It’s a standard font format that provides you with a typographic toolkit (layout features) to enrich and enhance type. For many years, you could only really use OpenType technology in a few select desktop publishing applications, but the time has come to bring these features to life on the web.
Up till recently typographic gems such as FF Mister K were not able to function as a Web FontFont, in fact many script fonts wouldn’t work well without OpenType features. However with this latest update, we can now welcome FF Mister K Web to the webfont family. Other FontFonts that have benefited from this update include FF DIN, (you can now use the famous alternative @ sign online) and FF Duper. All FF Duper weights contain three versions of each glyph, which when put into a text the stylistic alternative OpenType feature uses all three alternatives in succession. It treats vowels and consonants separately and even recognizes spaces between words creating a lively and hand-made appearance of the typed text. You can find out which particular features are included in specific fonts on single weights’ OpenType Layout Features tab.
Improved Formats and Subsetting
What’s more, we’ve now streamlined and improved our Web FontFont formats. Now you will receive a single webfont format only — WOFF, which provides the most up-to-date compatibility and includes OpenType features. Using our improved Subsetter website you can customize your Web FontFont to make the files lighter and faster to load and thereby save on bandwidth costs. You can produce Web TTF and EOT formats using Subsetter should you need them (these formats are suitable for older, outdated browsers). However, bear in mind that EOT won’t contain OpenType layout features nor kerning and that whilst TTF contains these features it is only supported by older browsers.
Take a look at Web FontFonts in action on our microsite and watch the video we created in collaboration with Stark Films again.
Want to see what your website looks like with a Web FontFont before you buy? Head to FontShop’s Webfonter.
