On 24 Oct 2006, at 15:20:22, Tom Livingston wrote:
Listers,
I am being asked for "ammunition" against pushing custom font families
to visitors of a Web site. Anyone have any references on this?
WEFT, eot, etc.
I know it has been discussed, but google has been fruitless as of yet.
Off the top of my head:
1. WEFT is only supported by Internet Explorer.
2. Microsoft appear to have done nothing at all with WEFT since
releasing WEFT 3.2 in February 2003: <http://www.microsoft.com/
typography/web/embedding/weft3/default.htm>.
3. Microsoft themselves don't, AFAIK, use WEFT at all on their own
web properties. If the creator of the technology doesn't think it's
practical or worthwhile to use it, and hasn't updated it in three-and-
a-half years, it implies that reliance on it would be foolhardy, as
they may well decide to just let the technology die.
4. (This gets more fun the more I look into it) On Microsoft's list
of demos at <http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/
default.aspx> it states: "These demos are for Internet Explorer 4.
Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5 exhibit some alignment problems in the
more complex demos." I would conclude from this that MS aren't
exactly investing a lot of effort in this one.
5. A google search for "weft security" or "embedded open type
security" reveals a number of security advisories. While it appears
that MS has issued patches for these problems, it is likely (given
the apparent lack of interest in ongoing development of these
technologies) that further vulnerabilities might be exposed, which
may in the first instance be dealt with by security products blocking
access to sites using said technologies. Thus your site could be
blocked by, say, Norton Internet Security until such time as MS got
around to patching such a vulnerability - and we all know how long
that can take.
Those might give you a start :-)
Regards,
Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
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