One issue that causes many designers to get frustrated with the web is the lack of robust font support. There less than 20 basic fonts that most browsers and operating systems support. To alleviate that frustration, there are ways around it using a combination of Javascript and Flash. Unfortunately, those methods can be a little clunky.
The developers of Cufón have created a similar process using SVG, VML & Javascript.
Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. To achieve this ambitious goal the following requirements were set:
- No plug-ins required it can only use features natively supported by the client
- Compatibility it has to work on every major browser on the market
- Ease of use no or near-zero configuration needed for standard use cases
- Speed it has to be fast, even for sufficiently large amounts of text
There is a great demo/tutorial at NETTUTS.
