Can I @font-face Helvetica?

Inazuma

Inazuma

Inazuma

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Hi,
As Windows doesn't include Helvetica as a standard fault, I was wondering if it's legal to upload the font to my server and use @font-face to enable it to be used on my web site?
 
Just use verdana and be done with it :p

But on a serious note, I don't know what the licensing is for Helvetica, but as the line above, it usually just a lot easier to use a common-place font than it is to try and distribute a font for your site.
 
You can't just upload a copy of Helvetica to your server and serve it with @fontface, especially if its just the copy of Helvetica that comes with OS X.

You can use Helvetica if you sign up to the webfonts service by Fonts.com though.

http://webfonts.fonts.com/

I haven't tested it, but I imagine it will look just be as bad as using Helvetica on Windows when the user has it installed, so as above I'd just use Helvetica for OS X and use Verdana as the fallback for Windows users.
 
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The main thing I'm concerned about really is that for some reason, any other sans-serif font I try using other than Helvetica, is very jagged around the edges (like a 3d game without anti-aliasing turned on). If anyone can tell me why, then please do.
 
What font size are you using? If using a non-TT size, the user-agent has to scale the font, and most do this badly. :)
 
It's not the Arial vs Helvetica that concerns me. It's the fact that Helvetica (at least on my system) has completely smooth edges while Arial (and all other fonts I try seemingly) are aliased.
 
Top is Arial, bottom is Helvetica through Chrome at 60px:
capturefq.png



Think you're just going to have to use a image with alt text or something like sIFR to make it any smoother.
 
Use Cufon as long as you have the correct licensing. It's the best way to use custom fonts, used by the likes of 'The Sun', Yell.com etc, and lots of the big design houses are moving over to it.
 
I think the smoothness that I see in Helvetica is more than likely due to my particular font file being .pfm.

Thanks a lot for the help, but the only solution is to either use an image or a different font where the jaggies are less noticeable. I don't really want to use the sIFR method.
 
Inazuma said:
I think the smoothness that I see in Helvetica is more than likely due to my particular font file being .pfm.

Thanks a lot for the help, but the only solution is to either use an image or a different font where the jaggies are less noticeable. I don't really want to use the sIFR method.
Click to expand...

Did you check out Cufon? Much less complex, much less bloated, better end result.
 
I just checked it out. Very cool indeed, and the font edges even become smooth. However as far as I can tell, styling them is limited/more complicated. Overall I don't have much use for it, especially as to load cufon and the font javascript takes longer than to load the font file itself.
 
Overall I don't have much use for it, especially as to load cufon and the font javascript takes longer than to load the font file itself.
Click to expand...
You need to load the Cufon API and then the javascript that contains your font = about 17kb. My font file on its own is about 16kb and the browser doesn't have to connect to two different files and crunch them to display the font.

However as far as I can tell, styling them is limited/more complicated.
Click to expand...
You need to edit the HTML to edit the style, and the styling you can do is limited compared to normal CSS.
 
As I mentioned earlier, I think the nice antialiased edges I saw were due to my particular Helvetica file being .pfm format.
 
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