Comments on: FLIR, Cufon, Typekit, or SFIR: Breaking Away From Web-Safe Fonts

By: Kevin Crawford

Kevin Crawford — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:41:15 +0000

Cufon has :hover enabled, but not by default. You have to do it like this:

Cufon.replace('body', {
hover: true
});

They say they have solutions for text selection, but that it doesn't work in Opera...well I DGAF about Opera. It would be really nice if text selection could be enabled (similarly to hover)

By: A Kingdom for a Great Font « Behind the Scenes: a Techie starts a Company

A Kingdom for a Great Font « Behind the Scenes: a Techie starts a Company — Thu, 20 May 2010 08:52:51 +0000

[...] Over the many years this has been a problem – and some solutions were created, sometimes quite creative ones. The, in my opinion meanwhile obsolete, attempts are sIFR (which uses flash) and faceLift (which renders text as images on the server). Both have their disadvantages – and then came Cufón (if you’re interested read the full review). [...]

By: Catherine Azzarello

Catherine Azzarello — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:48:48 +0000

I agree. And I'd like to add that font vendors and the EULAs are not always 'sure' about the legality of Cufon. I recently did a site with both Cufon (because I had purchased the font for the client/identity) and Typekit. When investigating the EULA, it was at best, vague. I inquired with the font vendor, who replied that it was more or less OK to use Cufon. (In reality, their answer was inadequate and missed the specificity of Cufon.) Here's the combo font site: http://eyestylesllc.com

In any case, Cufon is OK for headlines. But being unselectable and not honoring hover state, well, it's lacking. Whereas with Typekit, I was able to replace all paragraph text and secondary heads--nary a character of Arial or Helvetica in sight!

To date, every penny I've spent on Typekit is OK by me. It's so simple and seamless.

Also, even though there are WordPress plugins for both Cufon and Typekit, I prefer to hard code the JS into the header.php file. I had some Cufon issues last year following a WP version upgrade. Don't see the need for the plugins since I get everything working in static file before going to templates.

I will say the one tricky thing about Typekit is that you don't 'see' your fonts unless the site is live. So I've set up a dev site where I can view my font selections. It's a WP site populated by the dummy content plugin--a great way to see how all the possible permutations of text will work out. I change out my base theme (a CSS framework 'mashup") with current project theme/fonts. Check out the fonts I'm working with now: http://www.azzcatdevelopment.com/Mashup/

So to sum up, Typekit gets the gold, Cufon the silver. If I'm giving out bronze...it'll be to @font-face.

By: Catherine Azzarello

Catherine Azzarello — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:48:48 +0000

By: saracannon

saracannon — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:06:38 +0000

Thanks for this rundown! Cufon does gives you all options of fonts rather than typekit (which is great for keeping a brand consistent!), but cufon doest allow you have selectable text or apply hover states. (unless this has changed since I last tried it – that kind of kills it for me) Cufon indeed does make it easy to violate copyright laws – so I want to thank you for adding in your article the need to purchase licensing! (way to be a responsibly awesome)

As for me, I've been loving typekit lately. Especially because of their initiatives to connect with web font licensing with fontshop. I think this technology will most likely (and hopefully) expand to include all fonts and will be the future support of foundries. http://blog.typekit.com/2010/02/23/buy-fonts-at...

again, great article. -Sara