However, with the inclusion of @font-face in CSS3, most web browsers will be able to display fonts that are stored on a web-server, so that as long as users are using a compatible browser, they can see the typography as the designer intended. Of course, there's a catch. Because of the way font licensing works, it is still incredibly difficult for designers to embed fonts outside of a small library into their designs without violating the foundry licenses or intellectual property claims.
In May, the service Typekit was announced as a way to facilitate foundries and web designers to work together and offer more fonts for web page embedding. The service officially opened to the public last week.
How Typekit works is that you can subscribe to a monthly (or yearly if you prefer) plan to have access to Typekit's font library of professional, fully licensed fonts for your websites. The price is pretty reasonable; the portfolio plan costs just $49.99 a year for access to Typekit's complete library on up to five different websites.
Today, Typekit has announced that they have partnered with FontFont, a well-respected and high quality font house. FontFont fonts like FF Meta, FF Speak and FF Netto are now available for Typekit users to embed into their sites.
This is great news for web typography fans because it means that even more great fonts can become available to more designers -- and in a way that makes the font license holders comfortable.
I've been using Typekit for several months and am impressed with its growing library of fonts. As foundries continue to grapple with the licensing issues that will affect web typography and design, it's good to see solutions like Typekit continuing to gain momentum.