Typography on the web, what's good what's not?

[Barbara B]

As far as using @fontface to load fonts for a web page, I believe it is a very useful tool in a designers toolbox. And as with all tools, it can be used with skill and precision, or ham-handedly to poor and amateurish effect.

Literally millions of sites small (The Xara Xone which serves them locally) and large (The Boston Globe which is served by a CDN) use fontface for headlines and other special text without any performance problems.

These stunning and often award-winning sites wield the fontface tool creatively and effectively. And clean, award winning sites like MENDO or Boozy Cake Company even use fontface for body copy without ill effect.

If a concern about font face performance issues are holding you back, it's really no more of a concern today than loading large graphics, video, Flash, widgets or iframes (Facebook-like buttons, analytics, or adservers for example, can be horrible drags on page loads) page load is affected—and we all use them from time to time.