Cloud-Based Font Service Typekit Launches

One aspect that always proved problematic for web developers is fonts. There's been little choice when it comes to styles and things haven't really moved forward in this space since the early days of the World Wide Web. Now browsers are finally starting to offer support for more advanced font options and services are starting to pop up to cater to web designers wanting to spruce up their sites. One such service is Typekit which is now live for all users.

“For the past few weeks, we’ve been offering an invitation-only sneak peek at the Typekit service. Now, we’re happy to announce that we’re open to the public. You can head over to Typekit and start using it immediately!,” Typekit announced. “We’ve learned a lot about how browsers handle fonts and what web designers and developers need from a service like ours. We’ve been iterating daily to make Typekit as robust as possible. And we’re pleased to have maintained 100% uptime since we invited our first users back in August.”

The project was announced in late May, promising a cloud-based solution to web typography. The service offers access to a wide variety of fonts to choose from, which means that web designers can let their imagination loose without being constrained by the pale selection of default fonts or having to create an image or a Flash file to have more creative fonts.

The fonts themselves are hosted by Typekit and can be embedded in the site with very few lines of code and then accessed using the @font-face CSS option. Most modern browsers support the option, with the notable exception of Internet Explorer as usual, but, if legacy support is a concern, this may be a problem. This approach also means that the entire site can be indexable by search engine bots, a great boon for SEO. Finally, it can take some load off the servers as well, by not having to push the Flash or image files every time a new page is loaded. Typekit comes with a tiered service, the first option being a free Trial tier, coming with some limitations like a 5 GB bandwidth cap, fewer fonts to choose from, and just two fonts available for only one site. The paid options start at $24.99 per year.