The fact that all major Web browsers now support Web fonts is of course a great step forward for typography on the Web. However, not all Web browsers support the ability to use advanced typographic features that are part of OpenType fonts, such as standard and discretionary ligatures, contextual alternates, small caps, fractions, swashes and more. For this reason, it is important to know that OpenType font support is different from OpenType feature support.
OpenType fonts are supported by wrapping them into a WOFF container, or sometimes directly without the WOFF container.
The following example demonstrates text with and without standard ligatures.
The next example uses discretionary ligatures on the common ‘st’ letter combination.
The text strings and character codes in the HTML stay the same no matter what OpenType features are used or not used. Instead, these features are simply controlled with the style, typically from the CSS file .
Unfortunately, the support for OpenType substitution features is not yet broadly available in Web browsers. The good news is that nearly all of the most recent releases of browsers offer some level of support for OpenType features or are expected to add support soon. This means that Web browsers are moving in the right direction. However, as of now, good support is missing from the most commonly used browsers. Moreover, it takes years to flush out old browsers from the market. All this has prevented the wide use of these OpenType features on the Web, until now .
As a Web designer, you can simply use standard CSS techniques for controlling these OpenType features, while relying on our service to ensure the page renders beautifully and as intended no matter what browser the visitor is using.
To use this capability, sign in to your Fonts.com Web Fonts account and follow these steps
Check out this technology and start using OpenType features on the Web!