Arve Bersvendsen
[Why I hate SIFR]

[More]  ⦿

Ben Stucki
[BenStucki: Flex Font Embedding]

[More]  ⦿

BenStucki: Flex Font Embedding
[Ben Stucki]

[More]  ⦿

Caffeen Fonts (was: Chlorine)
[Jesse Wilson]

Canadian archive where you can download 19 fonts by Regina's Jesse Wilson: Chlorinez, Chlorix, Chlorinov, Chlorinut, Chlorinar, Chlorinap, Chloriin, Chloreal, Chlorinej, Chlorinuh, Chlorenuf, Chlod, Chlub, Hyper3, JesseScript, Morevil, Circle6, Caffeen, Star Five. Mac and Windows. Plus Math Donuts, Hawaiiah, Clawless, Alcohol Licks, Ostro 868, Megapixel, Fack, Courier Now, Disco2000, Jim Teacher, Edcom, Kitchener, Alterna. Some of his fonts are also available in sIFR format.

Dafont link. MyFonts link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Chaitgear

Free sIFR font library. [Google] [More]  ⦿

CoffeeCup Flash Website Font

A commercial Windows tool to create web pages that use your own fonts. By CoffeeCup Software from Corpus Christi, TX. It also has a medium-sized font archive. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Cory Mawhorter
[Facelift Image Replacement]

[More]  ⦿

Cufon
[Simo Kinnunen]

Free software published in 2009 to render text in a font of one's choice. Developed by Simo Kinnunen. From the announcement:

Cufon aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. To achieve this ambitious goal the following requirements were set:

• No plug-ins required - it can only use features natively supported by the client
• Compatibility - it has to work on every major browser on the market
• Ease of use - no or near-zero configuration needed for standard use cases
• Speed - it has to be fast, even for sufficiently large amounts of text

Cufon consists of a font generator, which converts fonts to a proprietary format and a rendering engine written in JavaScript. In reality the generator is little more than a web-based interface to FontForge. First, the generator builds a custom FontForge script based on user input and then runs it, saving the result as an SVG font. The SVG font is then parsed and SVG paths are converted to VML paths. This is a crucial step in achieving stellar performance in Internet Explorer, as it supports VML natively. The resulting document is then converted into JSON with a mix of functional JavaScript. This has numerous advantages:

• To include a font, you only need to load it with the standard tag as any other JavaScript file and it will be registered automatically
• There is no need to manually parse the file on client-side again
• External JavaScript files block execution until they have loaded, which helps us to achieve a flicker-free, clean replacement
• It compresses extremely well. While often somewhat large in terms of file size without any compression, a compressed font usually weighs in 60-80% less than the original.

Custom Fonts for the Web

We are in November 2008. The proposals for font usage on web pages are coming in from all sides. These include

• A spat of editorials regarding custom fonts for the web—with two competing proposals
• Microsoft's EOT.
• Embedding a TrueType font directly with the @font-face directive.
• Fahrner Image Replacement.
• sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement).
• Rendering SVG font definitions using dojox.gfx.

Dynamic Font Replacement Solutions

Image replacement survey, dated 2009. I quote some passages.

• 1. sIFR 2.0: sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash.
• 2. cufón: Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. Cufón consists of two individual parts – a font generator, which converts fonts to a proprietary format and a rendering engine written in JavaScript.
• 3. P+C DTR: P+C DTR allows you to take a vanilla standards-based (X)HTML web page and dynamically create images to replace and enhance page headings using only PHP + CSS.
• 4. FLIR: FLIR dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via Javascript and visible to all modern browsers.
• 5. SIIR: The SIIR program serves to basically change dynamic text on your website into pretty generated images with any font of your liking.
• 6. DTR: A pretty old JavaScript and PHP technique by Stewart on A List Apart.
• 7. sIFR 3: sIFR lets you use your favorite font on your websites by cleverly working with Flash, JavaScript and CSS.
• 8. Typeface.js: Instead of creating images or using flash just to show your site's graphic text in the font you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if your visitors had the font installed locally.
• 9. IFR: By using a dynamic Flash movie, some slick JavaScript and well-structured mark-up the same consistent branding can be achieved while greatly reducing production time and preserving the cleanliness of the mark-up.
• 10. PHP+CSS DTR: PHP+CSS Dynamic Text Replacement is a JavaScript-free version of the Dynamic Text Replacement method originally created by Stewart Rosenberger. This is  the P+C DTR version with word-wrapping and the ability to use inner tags.
• CSS Image Replacement [static]: Article by Chris Coyier explaining 9 different CSS Image Replacement Techniques.

Facelift Image Replacement
[Cory Mawhorter]

FLIR or Facelift Image Replacement is advertised as an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via Javascript and visible to all modern browsers. Any element with text can be replaced: from headers to elements and everything in between. It is an alternative to sIFR, and is free software by Cory Mawhorter. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Font Burner

Font Burner uses a technology called Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to change the fonts in the headlines of your site. Basically it hides the headline and puts a Flash file in their place. The Flash file is able to render the font without breaking the usability of your site. SIFR is an open source project available to one and all through novemberborn.net. After you find the font that you would like to use, Font Burner gives you a chunk of code that you will insert into the head of your webpage. The font searching is from a list of about 1000 fonts archived on their site. Unfortunately, the font designers are not identified! The embedded code looks like this (for the font Andron Scriptor):

FONTSmack

FONTSMACK is a repository of sIFR fonts along with TrueType and PostScript fonts. sIFR fonts are Macromedia Flash files (SWFs) that you can easily drop into your site. Run by Jonathan Snook. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Gzip your @fontface files

Advice on gzipping font files for placing on web pages. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Jesse Wilson
[Caffeen Fonts (was: Chlorine)]

[MyFonts] [More]  ⦿

Mark Wubben
[sIFR 3]

[More]  ⦿

Mike Davidson
[sIFR]

[More]  ⦿

OpensIFR

OpensIFRr is a free new tool that enables one to create sIFR flash files with given fonts. Example of its use. Mac and PC. [Google] [More]  ⦿

OpensIFR

Free Mac OS X program to create and make sIFR flash files for inclusion in HTML pages. This page states: I just found -on the web, where else?- a fairly easy method to create sIFR Flash Files without the need for Adobe Flash Studio itself. Thus, here it is: a free, dead-simple tool to help you convert as many font files as you need painlessly. Simple? Very. Select a TrueType Font File, select which glyphs you wish to convert or [x] All if you want a big fat .swf file, click on Convert, pick a destination directory and you are set. [Google] [More]  ⦿

PhotoFont

Fontlab's 2006 type format designed for web site use. Fonts are described in the human-readable XML language, and the glyphs are just bitmap pictures, typically in PNG format. The format is non-proprietary. Editing can be done in a standard editor, or via the (proprietary) BitFonter. Web pages using these fonts must have the photofont plug-in installed, but from there, with the appropriate tags, the screen fonts behave like standard fonts in text. Text is searchable, indexable, and so forth. Photofont Start is a free Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter and Macromedia Fireworks plug-in released in 2005. In 2008, Photofont WebReady was released by the FontLab people---with the help of sIFR, text on web pages is replaced by embedded text-searchable Flash.

Old but dead link. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Pxfon
[Shaun Inman]

Free software by Shaun Inman for creating Cufon-compatible pixel-based font.js files from specially prepared gifs. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Shaun Inman
[Pxfon]

[More]  ⦿

sIFR
[Mike Davidson]

sIFR is a method to insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. The method, dubbed sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), was developed in 2003 by Shaun Inman and later refined by Mike Davidson and Mark Wubben. It requires javascript, Flash, and some tags in the html code to designate text to be put in a font of one's choice. The on-the-fly replacement or overlay of text by a rectangle of Flash text is automatic, once sIFR is installed. The developer only needs to edit sifr.fla and export the font in .swf. Blog. [Google] [More]  ⦿

sIFR 3
[Mark Wubben]

Mark Wubben, its Dutch hacker/inventor, explains about sIFR 3: sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of JavaScript, CSS, and Flash, which renders the font. It degrades gracefully if Flash is not present. sIFR 3 is open source and licensed under the CC-GNU LGPL. [Google] [More]  ⦿

sIFR Flash Fonts Library

Stefan Isarie's sIFR flash font library with almost 300 fonts. [Google] [More]  ⦿

sIFR Generator

Free on-line font converter from truetype to sIFR. This may be a way of grabbing your font: We do keep fonts uploaded to sIFRGenerator.com for debug and statistical purposes. One should perform these tasks with trusted software on one's own computer. [Google] [More]  ⦿

sIFRFonts.com

A free sIFR font resource page. It has a small sIFR font archive. [Google] [More]  ⦿

sIFRvaultlltollz

Archive of sIFR fonts. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Simo Kinnunen
[Cufon]

[More]  ⦿

Stefan Isarie

Romanian web developer who runs a site without 300 free sIFR fonts. [Google] [More]  ⦿

TextDrive

SiFR support forum. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Truetype to SIFR converter

On-line truetype to SIFR converter. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Why I hate SIFR
[Arve Bersvendsen]

Arve Bersvendsen argues against sIFR as a solution for web fonts. He argues in terms of page nativation, keyboard selection and mouse selection. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Wiki.Novemberborn

SiFR wiki. [Google] [More]  ⦿

Windows Vista fonts

Microsoft's new Cleartype collection (released in 2006 after years of preparation) available here for free download in truetype format (and also sIFR format). These fonts are now sold by Ascender.

The fonts are: Calibri, Calibri-Bold, Calibri-Italic, Calibri-BoldItalic, Cambria, Cambria-Bold, Cambria-Italic, Cambria-BoldItalic, Candara, Candara-Bold, Candara-Italic, Candara-BoldItalic, Consolas, Consolas-Bold, Consolas-Italic, Consolas-BoldItalic, Constantia-Regular, Constantia-Bold, Constantia-Italic, Constantia-BoldItalic, Corbel, Corbel-Bold, Corbel-Italic, Corbel-BoldItalic. See also here and here. The OpenType versions are automatically installed when one downloads the beta 2 of Office 2007 or The Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats (Beta 2). Comments by Poynter Online. Another download site. Candara download. Zip file with the fonts. Calibri source. Jeff Atwood claims that Consolas, which was designed for ClearType, can barely be used without it. [Google] [MyFonts] [More]  ⦿