Any questions not answered here are welcome at webfontshowcase@myfonts.com or help@myfonts.com.
A: ‘Desktop’ fonts are what we call the TrueType, OpenType and PostScript fonts that you've been using on your computer for years. These are installed locally in your system's Fonts folder, and you use them in your word processor, design programs, etc.
“Webfonts” are the same fonts encoded in different ways, which web developers can use to design a website using the fonts of their choice. Browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) know how to download these fonts and use them to display web pages in the designer's desired choice of fonts.
At purchase time, you can decide whether you need one or the other, or both types of license. For example, if you will only be using a font on web sites, and don't need to use it in Word or Photoshop at all, you only need a webfont license.
A: To troubleshoot your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, more info at Wikipedia) you can enable a testing mode to debug any issues you have or assess your webserver's configuration. It will enable a debug page that will output the status of your webfont kit, testing all of your fonts. Enable testing mode and go to your homepage as normal, and the testing magic will take care of the rest. To enable "troubleshooting mode", copy-pasted code snippet from above change:
var myfont_webfont_test = true;
Testing is a global setting, it will test all of your fonts. When you are done testing, you'll just have to set the regular javascript back in place.
var myfonts_webfont_test = false;
If you continue having difficulty, feel free to write us at help@myfonts.com send us the web page URL for review.
A: It could be one of many reasons. Did you check the webfont previews to make sure it would render well in older browsers? Thin, highly stylized or grungy fonts won’t display very well in small sizes, and this can be checked before purchase in our Webfont previews. For other guidelines on optimal type design for the web, there's lots in our Webfonts know-how section or our further reading resources.
A: You can make your entire website out of a single bitmap graphic if you wish, but it would be very difficult to submit it to search engines, scale it for different browsers and devices, allow the user to print it, make easy updates or changes… the list goes on. Websites made from a single graphic file do exist, but they are rare and are an extreme example to prove our point. Normally, people compromise by having some elements within their design as live text, and some — often menu bars, buttons, and headers — as fixed size graphic files, if they want to do something interesting with typography. Using webfonts means you can keep those parts of your design that would have been converted into graphics as live text.
Using real text is preferable because it has huge advantages for accessibility. Sight-impaired visitors will be able to have more of your site read by screen-reader technology; search engines will be able to index more of your page, and interpret the relative importance of text by HTML tags such as <h1>.
A: No, as long as they’re not live text. That original license permits you to use the font on your computer within any application that supports font selection, including the graphic packages you use to make menu bars or header elements.
There’s also no reason to stop making graphical elements this way if you really want to. We outline why one might want to use webfonts in this article, but it’s by no means obligatory that every website now features live text everywhere.
A: There are two reasons: one, the license you agreed to on purchase only licensed the font for your own personal use (or that of employees at your company, etc.). Webfonts involve hosting the fonts on a public server where they must be accessed by anyone viewing your website, which requires a new license; and two, formatting fonts for the web and screen is a complicated business, given the wide variety of ways that web browsers and operating systems interpret the data built into your font file. Our webfont packages automate much of that compatibility work, as well as protecting the font files themselves from illegal distribution.
A: For older purchases, no; but if you purchase a desktop license by mistake, we can switch them for you. You can also add on a webfont license to a previously-purchased desktop for the same price as if you were buying the two together. If you look at the License Dashboard section of your order history, you can add webfont licenses to previously purchased desktop fonts for 50% of the normal desktop price.
A: That depends on your working relationship with your client. With webfont licenses, the name on the license must be the owner of the domain name, effectively meaning that you can’t share your license between multiple clients, in the way you might have been used to in print projects.
A: The style sheet included in our webfont kits includes a pageview counter. Pay As You Go license customers will receive a notification from us when they are close to exceeding their pageview limit.
A: Yes, absolutely. There are many tweaks and adjustments you can make to suit your requirements. See the Webfont Kit Builder tab on your order download pages in your Order History.
A: This is usually true, and you can download the "basic kit" from your order download page. Some reasons to build a custom kit include: limiting the selection of fonts in the kit (e.g. if you bought fonts for multiple projects in a single order); choosing between Javascript or CSS-only implementation; tweaking included characters / languages / advanced features.