13 Jun 2012
Google Web Fonts in Blogger

Web fonts have been around since the CSS2 specification came out ,but in the recent years there has been a huge adoption due to lots of services coming up to cater to the users needs. One of the first on the scene was Typekit and was followed by lots of others. But they were all paid services and hence out of reach of the many ,then came Google Web Fonts and rest is history. Not only was it free but being hosted at Google's servers it was the most reliable of them all. In this tutorial we will learn how to embed Google Web Fonts in Blogger .

Getting started
There are mainly two ways to embed Google Web Fonts into your blog , firstly you can simply use the Template Designer or you can include the specific font related Style-sheet directly to your template .

Using the Template Designer

Video Tutorial

Steps

1. In your Blogger Dashboard ,go to the Template page of the specific blog

2. Click the Customise button present just adjacent to the Edit HTML button

3. In the Template Designer , go to the Advanced Tab and you are now free to select the fonts for the various parts of your blog like Page Text , Blog Title ,etc

Cons
- You don't have access to all the fonts present in the Google Web Fonts Directory. Only a selected few are included in the Blogger's Template Designer

- An extra bit of JavaScript is added which is way more than the simple stylesheet added in the other method

<script type="text/javascript">
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE 6') == -1) {
  WebFontConfig = {
    google: { families: [ 'Pacifico' ],
    api: 'http://themes.googleusercontent.com/fonts/css?kit=YwEG9hvZkp55xA2jQoejfg'
    },
    loading: function() {
      if (window.jstiming) window.jstiming.load.tick('webfontLoading');
    },
    active: function() {
      if (window.jstiming) window.jstiming.load.tick('webfontActive');
    }
  };
  (function() {
    var wf = document.createElement('script');
    wf.src = '//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js';
    wf.type = 'text/javascript';
    wf.async = 'true';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
    s.parentNode.insertBefore(wf, s);
  })();
} else {
  document.documentElement.className = 'wf-inactive';
}
</script>

-This might not work if you are using a highly customized template the reason being the template designer would have removed the necessary CSS variables required for this to work. If you facing this problem then follow the other method below

Pros
- Simple to implement

- Surprisingly faster than the other method even though extra JavaScript is added

The Style-Sheet method

This requires a bit of fiddling with the Edit HTML of the Blog but is the cleaner of the two. I suggest that you follow this method

Video Tutorial

Steps

1. Go to Google Web Fonts and browse through the various fonts . Once you have selected which font to use , click the Quick Use Button just in the right hand side.

2. Now scroll down a bit and you will see a link tag code , copy this code

3. Now in the Blogger Dashboard ,go to the Template page of the specific blog

4. Click the Edit HTML button present just adjacent to the Customise button

5. Paste the code you copied just after the <head> tag

6. Now to add the CSS to use this font, just before the ]]></b:skin> tag

 h1 {
font-family: THE-WEB-FONT-FAMILY-NAME-YOU-EMBED ;
}

Embedding fonts is now a easy task, just don't overdo it, can have some negative effects Feel free to ask problems or questions related to this tutorial in the comments below

Til next time,
Prayag Verma at 19:26

scribble

13 Jun 2012 Google Web Fonts in Blogger

13 Jun 2012
Google Web Fonts in Blogger