I’m using Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7 and I went to a webpage that used a strange font. I found that it was not an image- I could select the text. I found the font name on the site’s CSS document and ensured that this font was not installed on my computer. I wonder, when a page says it uses a certain font that is not on the computer the browser is on, does the browser download from the web server a copy of the font file for use only by the browser’s renderer?
If so, where does it live on my computer (temporarily, I suppose) while I’m on a page that uses the font, and how do they make it so it can only be used for that page and not copied to my fonts directory on my system?
Pete,
The fonts are downloaded from either the web server or from a hosting company like ours. The processing being used is called @font-face and there is a ton of information abounding the Internets these days on this process. There are options that are free such as Google or Font Squirrel and there are paid services like WebINK, Typekit, FontDeck, Fonts.com, and others.
As to where they go on your machine. For the most part they go into the browsers cache either until the cache is cleared or if they have an expiration timeframe. Now some of the fonts you will see are open sourced and you can freely remove them from the cache and use them. Others are licensed and have constraints on how you can use them. However, there are methods that are employed by services like ours and others that render the font unusable in anything other than a browser. Remember that like artwork and photography these are works of art that have licensing constraints and thousands of hours of effort behind each one, so always check if the font license.