Google has just launched 2 new services, Font Directory and Font API. These new services when used together will allow web developers to use prettier fonts in their Font API documentation it is very simple to get these fancy fonts on your website design.
All you need to do is add:
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
h1 { font-family: 'Tangerine', serif; }
And this would change the <h1>’s in your site to use the Tangerine font.
Currently there are only 18 fonts in the directory, but Google are working with a series of high quality fonts that will soon be available to us through the directory.
Here is what Google says about the Font API
The Google Font API hides a lot of complexity behind the scenes. Google’s serving infrastructure takes care of converting the font into a format compatible with any modern browser (including Internet Explorer 6 and up), sends just the styles and weights you select, and the font files and CSS are tuned and optimized for web serving. For example, cache headers are set to maximize the likelihood that the fonts will be served from the browser’s cache with no need for a network roundtrip, even when the same font is linked from different websites.
These fonts also work well with CSS3 and HTML5 styling, including drop shadows, rotation, etc. In addition, selecting these fonts in your CSS works just the same as for locally installed fonts, facilitating clean separation of content and presentation.
The fonts in the Google Font Directory come from a diverse array of designers, including open source developers and highly regarded type designers, and also include the highly acclaimed Droid Sans and Droid Serif fonts, designed by Ascender Corporation as a custom font for Android. We invite you to browse through the directory and get to know the fonts and designers better. Since all the fonts are open source, you can use them any way you like. We also have a separate project hosted on Google Code for downloading the original font files. Since they’re open source, they can be used for just about any purpose, including for print.
This is just the beginning for web fonts. Today, we’re only supporting Western European languages (Latin-1), and we expect to support a number of diverse languages shortly.
