For Internet Explorer – the fonts have been compressed by Richard Fink’s great new EOTFast tool. EOTFast takes advantage of Microsoft’s Windows GDI Font API to compress the font data within the EOT wrapper. Prior to this advancement – Kernest was delivering uncompressed EOTLite EOT files.

Additionally, if Internet Explorer asks nicely – Kernest will serve up a pre-gzipped EOTFast EOT file. This additional compression can save an additional 40%.

For Firefox 3.6 and up, Kernest has been serving up WOFF files since October. WOFF, like EOT, compresses the font data internally – with gzip, rather than a Windows API call.

This leaves Webkit browsers (Safari, Chrome, Konqueror) and Opera. For those browsers – Kernest is serving up gzip compressed fonts. Bringing the file sizes of OTFs and TTFs down to the size of the WOFF files.

These compression strategies and Kernest’s client-side caching strategy are part of the larger goal of improving web font delivery performance while keeping the CSS readable and usable.

I’ll be covering; optimizing fonts for web use, browser compatibility, licensing, and answering your questions.

Registration is a very reasonable $200.

My apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

First Crack #125. Open Font Licensing with David Crossland

Also, I’ve updated and reworked the ‘Find More Fonts…’ section. It’s now at the top of the page and breaks out fonts by 3 high-level categorizations: serif, sans serif, script – with a text field for all the others (including any tags you’ve added).

The new Nav also includes a menu item for (non-Latin) Character Sets – Cyrillic and Greek have the most right now – with more Chinese and Japanese are on the way.

As I mentioned over on Twitter (@kernest) I’m very happy with the updated ‘Similar Fonts’ listing present on the individual font pages – the fonts listed are now much more, um, well, similar.

Which is great when you’re looking for the perfect humanist sans serif to replace Helvetica and Arial.

Lastly, in addition to the recommended line-heights, I’m also adding recommended word-spacing, letter-spacing to the fonts in Kernest – you’ll see my suggestions in the big box at the top of the page and in the ‘Font CSS’ on your website’s page. Many of the fonts (even the Web Native ones) were designed for print and are better opened up a little bit for the web. As with all the CSS Kernest delivers – you’re welcome to change it to suit your design and taste.

Happy @font-face.

As part of that, we’ve been adding more font previewing options within Kernest.com; this includes easily changing color, size, word spacing, letter spacing, and line height easily within the browser.

Today, I’m pleased to announce Kernest.com is offering downloadable Web Font Packages. This makes it even easier to try out fonts and provide a consistent brand identity across web and non-web designs.

The Web Font Packages include everything you need; the fonts, their licenses, sample CSS, and a sample HTML page.

To download the Web Font Package for the websites you’ve added to Kernest.com – sign in, click ‘Your Profile’ and click the ‘Download Web Font Package’.

While the vast majority of the fonts within Kernest.com are available for download – some are not. If you want to make sure the font you select is download-able, look for the ‘Downloadable’ style tag.

Happy Holidays.

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.

Top 20 Added Fonts

1. Chunk
2. Droid Serif
3. Junction
4. Droid Sans
5. Kaffeesatz Light
6. Droid Sans Bold
7. Droid Serif Italic
8. Droid Serif Bold
9. Liberation Serif Regular
10. Vegur-B
11. Liberation Sans Regular
12. M+ 1p Light
13. M+ 1p Thin
14. Graublau Sans Web Bold
15. Kaffeesatz Bold
16. Fat Finger
17. Vollkorn-Brotschrift
18. Liberation Sans Bold Italic
19. Liberation Serif Bold
20. Liberation Sans Bold

Top 20 Used Fonts

1. Chunk
2. Jinky
3. Fat Finger
4. Monika
5. M+ 1p Medium
6. M+ 1p Regular
7. Learning Curve Dashed
8. Inconsolata
9. M+ 1p Thin
10. Komika Axis
11. M+ 1p Bold
12. Junction
13. M+ 1p Black
14. M+ 1p Light
15. Kontrapunkt Light
16. Kontrapunkt Bold
17. Tin Doghouse
18. M+ 2p Bold
19. Bitstream Vera Regular
20. Droid Sans

Interesting note: the first list is filled with relatively traditional letterforms while the 2nd list is filled with far more distinctive fonts.

First Crack #124. Open Fonts with Ben Weiner