Safari 3.1 includes security fixes

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 02:16

Business IT - Technology

It also supports CSS Web Fonts, a CSS module that allows a browser to make a sensible choice of font when the one specified by the web page is not present. With Web Fonts, browsers might select a resident font with the same family name (eg, from a different foundry), use a database to determine the closest available font according to a range of characteristics, synthesise a font by adjusting the metrics of the closest available match, or download the font from the web.

Without support for Web Fonts, browsers rely on web pages specifying a list of fonts in order of the designer's preference. This can result in pages looking very different on different computers even if they are running the same browser and operating system. Differences in the metrics of the fonts in the list can play havoc with rendering, possibly causing one block of text to overlap another.