
New Google Web Fonts Interface - jamesjyu
http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2
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tobobo
Wow - I've never seen a cleaner font browsing interface, and they make using
the fonts you look at so easy I didn't even realize I was doing it.

Let's hope the Web Fonts API doesn't go the way of the Translate API, or many
webpages will be rendered in incorrect fonts. Horror!!

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beck5
Not quite the same load. Google fonts is more like Google Libraries than
translate.

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201studio
How many awesome things can Google roll out in a day?

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JakeSc
I'm blown away. Happy Tau Day!

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thematt
Great interface, but the number of fonts is a bit overwhelming to browse
through. It would be awesome if you could sort by "most downloaded" or "most
used" -- just to get some ideas.

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callmeed
Strange, the old interface had a sort by "trending" which is sort of what
you're looking for. Not sure why it was removed.

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thedjpetersen
Shoot right after I wrote this too...
<https://github.com/thedjpetersen/Google-Font-Api-Scraper>

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jonursenbach
At least you probably learned something while making it so it wasn't time
wasted.

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StacyC
Nice improvement to the interface. I've just recently started using these
fonts a bit and I really like the service. The collection is growing too so
there's a good variety there. Nice job, Google.

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cageface
I went to Google fonts yesterday for a design project for the first time in at
least a year and was very happy to see how much the collection has grown. This
new interface is icing on the cake. Making these fonts so easy to use really
opens the doors to much more creative and effective use of type on the web.

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hydrazine
Super like! Can't wait to try it. Looks much easier than tinkering with raw
CSS.

Edit: 2 lines of code were all I needed to add. Ridiculously easy.

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cdcarter
This is fantastic! I've been waiting and waiting for Web Fonts to expand, and
now I have a lot more choices than Syncopate and Raleway.

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eps
Don't pop the champagne just yet.

Virtually all fonts listed in Google's directory render poorly on Windows in
larger pixel sizes. This is caused by the lack of ClearType-specific hinting
in these fonts, and it leads to the appearance of so-called "nipples" - odd
pixels sticking out at the top and the bottom of glyphs and from thin
horizontal strokes.

More bad news is that properly hinting fonts for ClearType is a relatively
expensive process, and very few foundries do it even for commercial fonts.
Unless Google goes beyond simply listing fonts and starts cutting cheques to
polish them, these fonts will remain largely unusable for Windows' audiences.

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cdcarter
Interesting! Too bad Google doesn't list that limitation, eh?

Since I don't have a Windows machine to access right now, what size is "larger
pixel sizes?" I'd like to know what I'm working with.

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gimpf
It is already clearly recognizable at the default font size.

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ThomPete
This has several flaws.

For it's not consistent. I filtered for Serif and got sans serif in the mix.

But even worse. You can't specify very precisely. For instance if I need a
slab serif how do I filter that?

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habitatforus
Judging by the other comments, it's just me, but the fonts look worse now.
They aren't smooth at all.

Why?

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XLcommerce
Cleartype wreaks havoc on webfonts. Turning it off gives you smooth fonts, but
jaggy regular text >:|

Strangely IE6 (and 7? i think) are OK even with cleartype on.

There is a css hack to get font smoothing on windows:

h1{ text-shadow: 0 0 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.0001); /* Transparent Shadow make some
kind of webkit font smoothing kick in */ }

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habitatforus
I turned Cleartype off and that helped. The text shadow trick helped as well.
I would have thought that using Chrome would mean that Google's fonts would
have displayed correctly, but I guess Cleartype overrides that. I miss the day
when testing a website meant using just IE and Netscape -- now I have to turn
Cleartype on and off ... ugh

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scottseaward
I like this a lot. I'd love to see a monospace fonts filter. Although, saying
that, it looks to my eye like the only monospace font on there is Inconsolata.

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JCB_K
I still don't see the point of a service like this. With a tiny bit more work
you have them on your own server, and you have all the control. If Google
tomorrow decides to stop serving fonts, your design won't be broken.

With some services I understand people rather have it externally has it's a
hassle to do it yourself, but @font-face is too easy to not do it.

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Jach
Note they let you download the .ttf's... But the idea is the same as using
google apis for things like jquery. It lets you prototype quickly without
having to load a new font on your server every time you want to test something
different, if this gets popular and you're using a popular font chances are
it'll already be in the user's browser cache, and most importantly from my
perspective there isn't any ambiguity with this list as to which fonts I can
and can't legally redistribute.

Obviously don't count on Google to always be there for you.

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hsmyers
Keeps getting better with each iteration! That said, I'd still like to see
some pi fonts and printer's ornaments...

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rglover
This is a great update to their existing library. It reminds me a lot of
Fontcase and similar font browsing apps. It's great to see that their library
keeps growing. Definitely going to make this a first-stop before working on
designs from here on out. Thanks, Google.

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ya3r
They once had some Arabic fonts. Where did they go?

<http://i.imgur.com/L5hSF.png>

This is a snapshot of their IO's session video.

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callahad
I don't think those were ever publicly available -- probably an internal test.
I still had a Google Web Fonts tab open from last night, and it only shows
options for Cyrillic, Greek, Khmer, and Latin: <http://i.imgur.com/T3sh5.png>

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lautenbach
anyone have experience using this after typekit? we've been somewhat
disappointed with the inconsistency of typekit's rendering lately and are
looking for another option...

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theatrus2
Didact Gothic is a nice one for headlines.

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abhaga
I wish they would add Indic scripts too!

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jackpirate
How is this useful if everyone else hasn't already downloaded those fonts?
Everyone has Ariel. That's why it is so popular.

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notJim
You can embed font declarations in CSS (the @font-face declaration),
specifying a path to a download. The browser will download the font and show
it on web pages with the declaration.

Google offers an array of freely-available (open source, actually, I think,
but I'm not 100% sure) fonts that are hosted on their servers that you can
use.

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ethereal
> (open source, actually, I think, but I'm not 100% sure)

To quote from the "introduction" dialog [0]: "Hundreds of free, open-source
fonts optimized for the web".

Looking further, the "about" page [1] provides a bit more information: "All
the Google web fonts are open source. That means that you are free to to use
them in any way you want, independent of whether you're working on a private
or commercial project."

I'm not sure what license they're using, though . . . I can't find anything
but Google's standard "terms of service" license anywhere on the site.

[0] <http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2#HomePlace:home>

[1] <http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2#AboutPlace:about>

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elwin
The licenses are on the individual fonts' pages (try the "Pop Out" links.)
Most of them are under the SIL Open Font License.

