
Google Font Directory (expanded, moved to new URL) - moeffju
http://www.google.com/webfonts
======
benwerd
My favorite feature of this: the option to donate to the font designer when
you download. +1 (although I'd love to see the conversion stats).

~~~
herdcall
They should call it "reward," not "donate." These guys produced something
valuable, we aren't giving them cash for nothing. I wish they lose the
"donate" word in all situations like this (free software, etc.).

~~~
ceslami
I think they should use whatever verb results in the highest conversion rates.
Who cares about semantics -- it's more important that the designers are
getting paid.

Edit: typo.

------
rradu
These look a lot better than when Google first came out with the font API. The
selection is pretty good now, and seems like a great free alternative to
Typekit.

~~~
nailer
FYI with Typekit you'll need to use 'mo bulletproof' instead of the default
supplied demo CSS, otherwise your fonts won't show on Android (due to an
Android bug).

~~~
nailer
Replying to self: downmod that!

Typekit got in contact: they don't use the Paul Irish 'bulletproof' syntax
that has the bug (see [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3200069/css-fonts-
on-andr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3200069/css-fonts-on-android)).
They serve separate stylesheets to separate browsers - sorry, I have my font
services confused!

------
makmanalp
I don't want to rain on the parade, but I can't believe there is no search
box! :) On the other hand, great selection of fonts, and betting on Google not
being down is probably safer than betting any other font service not being
down.

------
pilif
Still (IMHO) not quite correctly anti-aliasing under IE/Windows

~~~
dspillett
Is that specific to webfonts implemented this way or the known difference
between Windows and other systems? (The Windows font render tweaks its
processing to force greater alignment with the pixel grid, to improve the
sharpness of the output, where other font renderers are more accurate in their
stroke positioning but this can lead to things looking more "fuzzy" (and,
depending on your monitor's settings, darker)

------
fedd
> available for use on your website under an open source license

what does this mean? am i free to use it on my website or can i edit/fork
them?

~~~
azar1
It's really weird (and a bit alarming) that they don't link to the license on
this page. Open source is pretty damn vague.

~~~
jedsmith
Click a font.

[http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Astloch&sub...](http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Astloch&subset=latin)

Complete with a link to: SIL Open Font License, 1.1

I would imagine they don't link to it on the index because they're reserving
the capability for fonts to have different licenses.

------
itsnotvalid
For now I am still not keen on webfonts, as my primary language is Chinese,
which, even using simplified form, would need at least 1000 popular
characters. Unless there is a even more dynamic way to load fonts by splitting
font characters by usage frequency, it would be a no-go for that (who uses
webfonts in the size of megabytes?)

~~~
lambda
There are tools which allow you to subset fonts, splitting them up by
character, so you could, say, produce a font containing only those characters
that you have in your headlines for you headline font. For example, Font
Squirrel <http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator> will allow you to
chose particular characters to include in your subset; though that's not very
useful unless you really only need a handful of characters that you can enter
manually.

It's true that for practical reasons, web fonts are less useful for CJK
characters than they are for languages with smaller character sets. I imagine
someone will write tools to make it a little easier to deal with, but it may
not ever be as convenient as for other writing systems.

~~~
itsnotvalid
Well I am aware that this is possible, but only useful if I can somehow
"combine" subsets into one single font. I have not yet devoted time to see if
this is actually possible right now, though.

Say I have the lists of usage frequency for my target language (say Simplified
Chinese) and then I want the most used 60% in subset A and other 40% on subset
B. But at the end I need to have 100% applied to the same font, which doesn't
seem possible without some javascript mangling by looking up the text to apply
the correct subset ...

------
winestock
I already had this bookmarked in my Delicious account. The only change to the
URL seems to be that it is http instead of https.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Looks like they changed the name.
[http://googlewebfonts.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-web-
fonts-...](http://googlewebfonts.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-web-fonts-new-
stats-new-name.html) says "To make it easier for all, we’re also pleased to
announce a re-branding of the “Google Font Directory” to “Google Web Fonts.”
The service is now available via the simple, memorable URL:
www.google.com/webfonts ."

------
mapleoin
This page just freezes my Firefox.

~~~
chanux
Crashes Firefox 3.6.13 on Ubuntu.

~~~
jedsmith
[http://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/issues/detail?i...](http://code.google.com/p/googlefontdirectory/issues/detail?id=26)

<http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=598166> and
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626966> are linked from there, but
they seem to indicate it's done. Perhaps Firefox hasn't pulled in the fix for
3.x yet.

------
xcvd
Doesn't work in FF 3.6?

Looking at the actual Google page, the fonts don't load.

