Welcome Web Fonts!

Google and Typekit both spilled some much-anticipated beans last week. First off, Google announced they are releasing high quality open source fonts in the Google Font Directory. Users will be able to download these open source fonts from http://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/.  They also went so far as to release Google Font API, which is an HTML based tool that enables you to implement any of these fonts into your site with a level of ease that we’ve been accustomed to from Google.

Wait. It gets better. Typekit and Google announced the release of a Web Font Loader to smooth out any issues when putting their web fonts to use.

The WebFont Loader puts the developer in control of how web fonts are handled by various browsers. The API fires JavaScript events at certain points, for example when the web font completes downloading. With these events, developers can control how web fonts behave on a site so that they download consistently across all browsers. In addition, developers can set the fallback font's size to more closely match the web font, so content doesn't reflow after loading. Furthermore, the WebFont Loader is designed to make it easy to switch between different providers of web fonts, including Google, Typekit, and others. The code is modular, and we expect to add modules for other major web font providers in coming weeks.

To see an example of Google’s web fonts in the flesh visit Smashing Magazine.