Cufon is a well-known technology for designers who wish to replace the font of their websites with more image-like text, or else use a font that doesn’t exist on regular browsers. This is achieved through javascript techniques. I wanted to know the latest opinions about Cufon, and so I went to some experts and well-known figures in the web design community to hear their views. I thought that I would share a few with you here at PyThoughts.

Experts on Cufon

Joshua Johnson from Design Shack says:

I think Cufon was at one time an important development but the limitations are simply too restricting to ignore at this point. Cufon requires JavaScript and doesn’t support text selection. Meanwhile, @font-face font replacement is easily accomplished using only CSS and creates perfectly selectable text. @font-face is simply a better method and I haven’t seen a single convincing argument yet for using Cufon instead. Even the Cufon website, while endorsing Typekit, says that selectable text through @font-face is “the easiest way to embrace standards.”

Josh is a freelance graphic designer and avid Mac evangelist. He lives in Phoenix, AZ where he recently graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in global business/marketing. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Adam McCombs from McCombs Creative says:

Even though cufon is relatively new I think it’s an antiquated technique. Personally I don’t care for how it treats the markup, wrapping each transformed word inside a div with double markup. Cufon also makes it impossible to select or copy and paste text. I think a much better solution is to use @font-face or a font delivery service like Typekit (http://typekit.com/). While fonts display differently in most browsers, @font-face doesn’t do any evil things to your markup. If you want to get really fancy, Letting.js (http://letteringjs.com/) allows you down to the letter control.

Adam runs the design firm Mc Combs creative, and is co-author of the book The Definitive Guide to Magento. You can connect with Adam on Twitter here.

Erik Ford from We Are Pixel8 says:

Prior to the modern browsers’ support of @font-face, Cufon and its predecessor, sIFR, were viable, if not somewhat clunky, options for rich web typography. But, because of its dependence on javascripting and the lack of selectable text support, we have chosen to leave this particular tool in the tool box. We love the fact that @font-face is a CSS declaration and does not require obtrusive javascript trickery. And though there aren’t as many typefaces available for the @font-face declaration right now, I doubt this will be the case by the end of 2011. We are starting to see providers, such as MyFonts, Font Bureau, Font Shop and Font Spring , offer licenses for web versions of fonts in their respective libraries. From a designer’s point of view, this is liberating. But, most importantly, from a developer’s point of view, this allows to continue to write code with today’s best practices and standards in mind.

Erik is the lead designer and developer at We Are Pixel8. Besides being a transplanted Native New Yorker and all around design addict, he is also a proud father, an ex-music biz exec and rabid NY “Football” Giants fan.

Cufon Conclusion

So, as we can see, Cufon doesn’t have such a good standing with professional web designers today – however, still many of the designs we see today are implementing this technology. There may be more views on the topic, so please share your thoughts and reactions in the comments.

If you still insist on using Cufon after this, Pythoughts offers some free Cufon fonts for download.