Blog.Kernest.com

I’m happy to report the bug that made the web font package downloading unreliable has been fixed.

My apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

David Crossland (Cantarell font family, Open Font Library) and I dive into font licensing – specifically open font licensing – and the cultural benefits of open licensing.

First Crack #125. Open Font Licensing with David Crossland

Great question.

The Free fonts within Kernest can be used at no charge.

All Web Native fonts fonts are free. In addition they have the characteristics I identified in Web Fonts – Identifying a New Species that make them better for web use than fonts without the Web Native designation.

These characteristics are; a large x-height, low stroke contrast, and open counters.

Feel free to add the ‘web native’ tag as you see fit within Kernest – and if you see a font with the Web Native designation that you don’t feel deserves the designation, let me know.

Thanks.

I recorded a podcast with Ben Weiner discussing the open font library, web fonts, and font licensing.

First Crack #124. Open Fonts with Ben Weiner

Google just released Chrome Frame a plug-in for Internet Explorer that makes IE act like Google’s Chrome browser.

Something of a peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate value proposition.

Considering Internet Explorer’s historic support for @font-face and that Google hasn’t formally turned @font-face support on in Chrome, I wondered if fonts delivered by Kernest would render as expected.

Yes. Just as expected.

Internet Explorer still requests and renders the EOT fonts like it has for decades.

Chocolately peanut butter, yum.

Nope. I was wrong. Chrome Frame breaks Internet Exploreres @font-face support.

Oh the irony of a browser promising better web technology support removing @font-face support.

So, What caused the false positive?

Chrome Frame doesn’t automatically activate itself upon installation (not what I expected). ‘Enabled’ isn’t ‘activated’. Big thanks to Paul Irish for pointing this out.

How to test for yourself load this URL in Chrome Frame
cf:http://kernest.com
The ‘cf:’ forces rendering in Chrome’s Webkit engine.

Richard – on the question of IE-Tab in Firefox: Yes, the IE engine calls EOT files and renders the font. Though, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

Tonight, I updated Kernest to better recognize font-families – and the characteristics of their member fonts.

Attributes like: italic, thin, condensed, etc, etc, are now all displayed in the CSS generated by Kernest for your website.

The upside of this is you’ll be able to make a more degradable font stack, something like:

font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, serif;
font-style: italic;


Rather than specifying each Kernest font separately. Yes – it feels much cleaner and more standards-compliant all around.

If you’re using Kernest fonts now – take a look at the new CSS, you may need to make some updates on your end.

Let me know if you run into any issues.

Thanks.

An hour-long conversation with a new person using Kernest.com and this afternoon inspired me to started a Kernest.com Google Group for conversations about using Kernest.com, type-as-a-web-service, @font-face, etc, etc.

To join, add your email to the box in the side bar or head over to http://groups.google.com/group/kernest

Aside from making my testing that much easier and more stable – the release of Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5 means technical adoption of @font-face is complete by the 3 major browsers.

Now, the challenge is to increase adoption by type designers and web designers.

Today, when you want to purchase some clothing – say some new shoes or a new suit – you visit the store where they’re sold, try a number of them on checking out the fit, comfort, appropriateness. Narrowing a wide offering down to a handful of items that are going to work.

Then, on your way out the door – you pay for the items that you’re going to commit to.

Now imagine a different scenario – one where you’re charged to try-on.

Every selection from the rack is another sale and once you’ve made your selections, you have the option of taking everything you’ve tried on or just the ones that work.

How would pricing change in this second scenario?

First off, the prices would be significantly smaller than in the first scenario. And the seller would be betting on an increased volume of sales to offset the lower prices to be a net positive on revenue.

From the buyer side, this second scenario provides incentive to just grab everything that might work, run out the door, and hope for the best while filling the closet with stuff that may never be used.

For me, the first scenario is far more attractive all the way around.

You?

A couple weeks back, I had heard rumors of another project working on the same problem Kernest is. But at the time, the name wasn’t shared.

Thankfully, they’ve introduced themselves: TypeKit.

Hi TypeKit, I’m Kernest.

I’m glad to see this space is filling out. It’s only been 12 years