Will EOT Become the Standard for Font Embedding?

By Louis Lazaris on October 21st, 2009
Categories: Graphic Design & Layout, Web Standards & Best Practices | 5 Comments >

If you’re at all familiar with the various methods in use today to embed custom fonts in web pages (sIFR, Cufon, @font-face, etc), then you also may have heard of a font format called EOT. Well, if Microsoft has it their way, EOT will become the standard, allowing web developers — with permission from font vendors — to be free to use virtually any font in a text-friendly manner in their web pages.

So what is EOT, and how has Microsoft pushed to standardize this method? Embedded OpenType fonts are compact OpenType fonts designed by Microsoft for use as embedded web fonts. They are recognizable by their “.eot” file extension. By means of data compression and removal of superfluous data, EOT files are made small in size and include features that protect the fonts themselves from being copied and used in unauthorized ways.

Continue Reading >