I've a feeling that 2010 is the year that typefaces are finally liberated onto the Internet. Up until now there have been several factors stopping the widespread use of typefaces other than the standard 'web safe' fonts like Arial, Verdana, Comic Sans and Times New Roman being used. This meant a companies print literature didn't match their website and designers were limited with what they could do, but slowly, it's beginning to change and I've been experimenting.

So why can't you just use any font from your computer on a website? Up until now the problems with non-standard 'web fonts' included poor rendering - meaning the font looks poor on the screen, the font not being displayed if the user doesn't have it on their computer, a lack of typographic control and no standard font format that worked in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc, and and licensing issues with using typefaces on the internet. Not all of these problems have been fixed yet but great strides have been taken recently which I've been following closely, and with careful use it is possible to liberate fonts on the Internet. There are 'workarounds' such as using images of the text with the correct typeface or Flash movies but none are very elegant solutions.

For headlines and large text the most common method is to use images but this is far from an ideal solution as the writing in an image can not be 'read' by search engines, it takes time to make each heading graphic and if a new page is add to a site an image must be created which limits the power and flexibility of the Content Management Systems (CMS). Links can't easily be added, text selected, copied etc. Using images for body copy and addresses/telephone numbers id totally unacceptable.

Flash can render fonts beautifully, but suffers from similar problems to using images, however it can be more easily updated and selected. The biggest problem is many offices' firewalls still block Flash so text can be missing from sites.

With the release of Firefox 3.6 Mozilla introduced a new font format WOFF (Web Open Font Format), that has started to gain support in the industry with the likes of FontFont actively supporting it. No other browsers can use it yet but if enough font foundries start using it they'll have to take note. Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari all support font embedding of some kind so with a little clever trickery it's possible to make sure that all the main browsers will display the type you want ensuring brand consistency across print and online mediums.

Browsers such as Firefox are now improving their font rendering and type control too with kerning and ligatures being applied to text, companies like FontFont and TypeKit are resolving the problems with licensing and developers are experimenting more and more. Looking around the internet more sites are using typefaces to help create a unique brand identity. Sites such as ComComedy have successfully employed non-standard typefaces such as the rounded face they use which is taken from their logo.

But you have been careful to use it only for headlines and larger text. As BoingBoing discovered during their recent redesign not all fonts look good screen yet, particularly at small sizes so care and attention must be taken and the site tested as much as possible. Not everyone is going to spot that a site is using a different typeface, or not using images for headlines and titles, but we will all benefit as websites will be faster, look better, be easier to search and probably most importantly, more accessible to users with disabilities.

I've started using non-standard fonts on some websites and combined with my CMS's 'typographic engine' - that automatically fixes quote marks, hyphens etc - I've a strong feeling that this year will be a good one for people, who like me, love making websites and also typography.

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2. Font Clock
3. The Rather Difficult Font Game
4. Channel Island Browser Wars. You’re at Risk.
5. Firefox 3.5 Web Browser Released