I’ve started to you Typekit on my site and various projects as a replacement for Cufon. So far it’s been really great and I have no regret’s.
That said there are a few advantages and disadvantages that are important to recognize for certain situations.
Advantages
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Faster and leaner
The flicker time on page load with Typekit seems to be quicker and less noticeable than Cufon. The time involved in setting up Typekit is less as well.
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Better typographic control
Font rendering is more reliable when combined with out of the box CSS. Typekit allows for better control of line-height and typography enhancements.
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No copyright issues
You can rest easy knowing that all font’s abide to their original license agreement. You’re font replacement with Typekit is legit and supports the font community.
Disadvantages
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Limited number of font choices
Though the library offered by TypeKit is extensive, it lacks some of the well known font’s I would love to use in my projects. Well known font’s like Franklin Gothic, Gotham, News Gothic, Meta and more aren’t the type of font’s that are likely to make it into their open library of choices.
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Poor display in Internet Explorer
I’ve reverted to using web-safe fonts for all current versions of Internet Explorer since @font-face support just isn’t there yet. Cufon has more support at this time.
The Bottom Line
Overall I’m very happy I made the switch to Typekit and would recommend it for font replacement on the majority of my project. As an alternative I would suggest exploring Font Squirrel @font-face Generator. I’ve done this in circumstances where the company you’re working with has ownership of the font’s they use.
Font Squirrel will allow you to quickly setup all the details needed to support @font-face in various browser’s. I would ditch the support in Internet Explorer, it’s very pixelated and not worth it at the moment. A web safe font should suffice until Microsoft get’s their shit together.
Share Your Thoughts
Have any other suggestions or opinions? Feel free to comment, I do my best to get back to each and every comment.