Computers have been capable of displaying multiple fonts for several decades now, so it might seem odd that fonts are only just now becoming standardised on the web. However, disagreement on file formats along with complex font licensing issues have turned this into quite a difficult challenge to overcome. Fortunately, CSS 3 has put the spotlight back on web fonts, and the web is rapidly moving into a multi-font future.

Applying various fonts to blocks of text is nothing new. However, the ability to include new font faces is indeed new, where as before, we were limited to the browser defaults. To include a new font, download the font file that you’d like to include, and then use the @font-face rule to specify a name for the font along with a file path. After that, you can use the font as you normally would.

@font-face {
   /* Select a name for your font */
  font-family: special-font;
 
  /* Point to the font file */
  src: url('myfont.otf');
}
 
/* Now use it! */
body {
  font-family: special-font, Arial;
}

Browser Compatibility

This seems simple enough, and indeed, the @font-face rule works in every browser going all the way back to early versions of Internet Explorer. Including fonts isn’t quite that straightforward due to a few lingering file format compatibility issues, but fortunately, several font services have greatly simplified the process and abstracted away these problems. My favourite font service is Google Web Fonts, and I highly recommend you check it out. You can pick any fully licensed font for free, and then all you have to do is include a CSS file from Google’s fast content delivery network. Once the external CSS file has been included, the new font is available to use in other CSS documents.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

From the official Google blog.

I for one am a huge Google Wave fan and hate to see this go. Why Google? Why!?

Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten…

This is great news for me as I use WordPress for many projects and have been waiting on this for some time now. I have downloaded a copy and have already played with it.

Visit the WordPress site for more information
Download the new WordPress 3.0!

If you’re a new developer looking to get into WordPress development i recommend Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)
for getting started.

Wordboxes LLC launches it’s first product a short url service. The service offers to turn long urls that tend to break when sending in an email to short more manageable ones. The site will also remember the urls you have created for about fifteen minuets, so if you forget you can go back and look at the url you made. That “Saved url” feature will also tie in with the main application and tie direct to your Wordboxes account.

Also in the short future there is plan for a small light weight desktop & iPhone application for the short url service. This will also tie into the main Wordboxes app once live.

Visit Wrdbx.es

Read more about Google’s Chrome Frame

Thanks Google!

Vetteblock Online Corvette Social Utility

On August 15th, 2008 October 1, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser:

Read it all at 37Signals.

Well, time for a CSS 3 trick! I will cover rounded corners! This is only supported by Firefox and Safari. Below you should see a box with rounded corners!

Here is the code:

<div style="-moz-border-radius: 5px;
background-color: #333;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
border: 1px solid #fff;">
 
This box has rounded corners!</div>