So why now? We’ve wanted richer web typography for ages. Why are all these new services starting to pop up now all of a sudden? One major reason is Firefox 3.5. With this latest release, we now have a situation where finally all major browsers support the long awaited CSS property @font-face. And with this new possibility – the possibility of including basically any font of your choice – the whole rights issue has become much more evident. @font-face has in its simplicity no way of securing the used fonts, meaning it’s dead easy for your visitors to simply just steal your font. Hence the need for a secure way of displaying your expensive font.
While these rights issues are being sorted out, there is however no reason for you to just sit and wait. The new situation actually opens up a whole new world of possibilities, today. The way to go is to find those fonts that do allow for web inclusion, because they do exist (even if some are of higher quality than others).