What is quoted below is a post I made on my old blog March 25, 2005 -
While Some would say that Web Typography still sucks. I would say it isn’t a big issue. The average web user notices nothing strange about serif or sans-serif fonts compared to their favorite magazines unless pointed out to them. Although I do highly agree that it is either too complicated or too much work to include the font of your choice in a website.
This is of course is a blessing in disguise as 1,000,000 geocities members would soon prove by using fonts like Bullet Holz or even worse Kefka.
This Article on Using CSS to Embed a font has another danger listed. The font must first be downloaded before the page will be seen. In a world of high-speed internet, this wouldn’t be a problem, sadly we aren’t in that world yet.
It’s just another case of trying to figure out “Is this something we really need or not?”. As a designer I think not, Images and flash can get our messages across with minimal use of a ‘designer’ font. The text on web pages are easy enough to read with what’s available, no reason to complicate matters. As a web surfer, the answer is also no, I don’t want to waste my time deciphering someone’s font choice.
Comfortability breeds clarity.
Its amazing how in almost 3 years, the ability to use your own custom font still hasn’t found a simple remedy and yet is still a feature that isn’t needed. As blogs have become the new Geocities (meaning overpopulated with a lack of design or overuse of a template), it’s better to keep the type simple before readability becomes a huge problem.