[html] How do I load external fonts into an HTML document?

How do I load external font files into an HTML document.

Example: Make the text "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah" a custom font from a TTF file in the same directory using HTML CSS and/or JAVASCRIPT

Paul Irish has a way to do this that covers most of the common problems. See his bullet-proof @font-face article:

The final variant, which stops unnecessary data from being downloaded by IE, and works in IE8, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome looks like this:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Graublau Web';
  src: url('GraublauWeb.eot');
  src: local('Graublau Web Regular'), local('Graublau Web'),
    url("GraublauWeb.woff") format("woff"),
    url("GraublauWeb.otf") format("opentype"),
    url("GraublauWeb.svg#grablau") format("svg");
}

He also links to a generator that will translate the fonts into all the formats you need.

As others have already specified, this will only work in the latest generation of browsers. Your best bet is to use this in conjunction with something like Cufon, and only load Cufon if the browser doesn't support @font-face.

Regarding Jay Stevens answer: "The fonts available to use in an HTML file have to be present on the user's machine and accessible from the web browser, so unless you want to distribute the fonts to the user's machine via a separate external process, it can't be done." That's true.

But there is another way using javascript / canvas / flash - very good solution gives cufon: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ library that generates a very easy to use external fonts methods.

Try this

<style>
@font-face {
        font-family: Roboto Bold Condensed;
        src: url(fonts/Roboto_Condensed/RobotoCondensed-Bold.ttf);
}
@font-face {
         font-family:Roboto Condensed;
        src: url(fonts/Roboto_Condensed/RobotoCondensed-Regular.tff);
}

div1{
    font-family:Roboto Bold Condensed;
}
div2{
    font-family:Roboto Condensed;
}
</style>
<div id='div1' >This is Sample text</div>
<div id='div2' >This is Sample text</div>

Microsoft have a proprietary CSS method of including embedded fonts (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533034(VS.85).aspx), but this probably shouldn't be recommended.

I've used sIFR before as this works great - it uses Javascript and Flash to dynamically replace normal text with some Flash containing the same text in the font you want (the font is embedded in a Flash file). This does not affect the markup around the text (it works by using a CSS class), you can still select the text, and if the user doesn't have Flash or has it disabled, it will degrade gracefully to the text in whatever font you specify in CSS (e.g. Arial).

I did not see any reference to Raphael.js. So I thought I'd include it here. Raphael.js is backwards compatible all the way back to IE5 and a very early Firefox as well as all of the rest of the browsers. It uses SVG when it can and VML when it can not. What you do with it is to draw onto a canvas. Some browsers will even let you select the text that is generated. Raphael.js can be found here:

http://raphaeljs.com/

It can be as simple as creating your paper drawing area, specifying the font, font-weight, size, etc... and then telling it to put your string of text onto the paper. I am not sure if it gets around the licensing issues or not but it is drawing the text so I'm fairly certain it does circumvent the licensing issues. But check with your lawyer to be sure. :-)

If you want to support more browsers than the CSS3 fancy, you can look at the open source library cufon javascript library

And here is the API, if you want to do more funky stuff.

Major Pro: Allows you to do what you want / need.

Major Con: Disallows text selection in some browsers, so use is appropiate on header texts (but you can use it in all your site if you want)

CSS3 offers a way to do it with the @font-face rule.

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-webfonts/#the-font-face-rule

http://www.css3.info/preview/web-fonts-with-font-face/

Here is a number of different ways which will work in browsers that don't support the @font-face rule.