The missing link: Cascading Style Sheets in Web Design
Listening to the font embedding part of Roger Black's lecture at ATypI 1999 on October 8th, it strikes me that the Cascading Style Sheet subject was missing in the discussion. Well, together with font embedding, CSS is - at least to some extend - the answer to the request from the graphic designers who wants to make design for the web. Though not all features are supported by all browsers, you may actually define what - in the web sense - is to be considered as typographic aesthetics such as linespacing, letterspacing and kerning. You can also determine that your point sizes will not be limited to the 7 sizes that are relative to the browser's preference settings. The kerning is not automated with the kerning pairs that are defined in the font, but you may manually set the most critical pairs such as 'Ty'.
Thus, if you're doing web design, go ahead with CSS. You just have to ask for browser version 4 and up. And don't start talking about the lowest common denominator. With font embedding you're already far beyond that. Anyway, elder browsers are no problem, because - as with font embedding - the non-supported tags are ignored. The browsers just won't show the full design.
For more information, www.w3.org will lead you to allmost anything you want.
Torben Wilhelmsen - torben@wil.dk
