Fonts, or rather digital fonts, can come packaged in a few different formats. So when Netscape, for instance, implemented the feature they used a closed-source digital font format known as TrueDoc from the company BitStream. The CSS spec defined the structure of the font-face rule, but didn’t go much further than that. And suddenly, designers could use custom fonts. Internet Explorer, a bit ahead of the curve at the time in terms of CSS support, was the first to implement Netscape wasn’t far behind. So even if the user browsing a page did not have a font installed on their computer, they could still view it. It was called it let developers link to a URL of a font file that browsers could download, and then display on a webpage.

Introducting solve this problem a brand new rule was introduced in CSS2, which started to make the rounds in 1998. But even with the addition of these two fonts, there were only about 10 fonts total a designer could chose from they could be sure visitors would see. These fonts took into account the still latent rendering abilities of early web browsers and subsequently looked great on digital screens. Microsoft helped quite a bit when they commissioned and then released for free two fonts designed specifically for the web, Verdana and Georgia. Because operating systems were so different, there were very few guaranteed choices. But the web was multi-platform (a feature, not a bug I might add), so browsers could be used across computers and operating systems. For a user to actually see a developers font choice with font-family on a webpage, the font itself needed to be installed on their computer. As browsers moved to implement these font rules, designers began to have some actual (but still fairly basic) control over typography. The specification contained the first ever font styling rules, which included font-family, font-variant and font-weight. So even the first version of CSS in 1997 made special mention of fonts. Back then, the web was more or less just text.

The creators of the web understood the importance of typography and font selection in the early days. It’s just that no one used them for 10 years. Web fonts had been technically feasible and ready to go since 1998, with the release of Internet Explorer 4. The release of the WOFF format signaled a new day for web fonts, and implementation reached more or less a consensus among browser makers and developers. In 2009, the WOFF font format was developed, and subsequently sent to the W3C to become part of an open standard. But this is the story of fonts, that fundamental building block of design. And at the very least, typography accounts for 95% of web design. The web has a long and storied history with text, typography and fonts.

Css pirate fonts