Google Allows More Flexibility for Website Fonts

Carolina Usbeck - August 24, 2010

Google has created a font API that allows a range of fonts to be use in websites. The types of fonts available can really transform a site and make it more attractive to users.

Google also provides a font previewer, where you can test how a font will look and help you decide if any of the fonts available in font previewer will work on your site, as well as customizing it. To implement one of these fonts all you need to add is a link to an external stylesheet and customize your site’s styles with the new font. You can view an example of how to set it up here.

Even though this API is still in Beta testing, it shows how impressive it’s use is, and how easily it is to set up. The only problem that will need to be faced is how fonts that are not open source, fonts you need to pay to use, will be considered in this API.   Buying once, will allow anyone visiting the site to view that font and this could create a problem. Google only provides open source fonts, and they seem to work fine in most browsers, but questions about fonts that are not open source will soon be raised. Below you can view a font called tangerine, added using the Google fonts API and how it renders in 4 different browsers IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

The flexibility allowed from this API can create sites with a more distinguished look and feel and also allow older sites currently using images to change those images and replace them with text, especially navigation items. This will improve the site’s SEO ranking as well as making any updates to the site easier and a lot faster.