Some time ago I discovered, that some wallpapers on the web are mostly the same, but slightly differs — for example snowy or green landscape, sunshine or nightly. I don’t know how with other OS, but Ubuntu Linux (from 9.04) can automatically (and smoothly) change wallpaper in selected time, and these format is open (heh, that’s Open Source, dude!). Also, there are lots of Geocoding web-services to get sunset and sunrise time at your location. So why don’t use it and create such geo-cozy mashup for our desktop?

Let’s use great wallpapers from Yoritsuki and Vacation 2008: Into the Sky from HybridWorks.JP.

See, download, install and give your feedback.

While there are lots of free, open or just “available for web-embedding” fonts, most of them are ready to display only strict set of “latin-1″ characters. So, I’ve spent little time and found several fonts that have some Unicode support — Cyrillic symbols for rendering Cyrillic content (Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh etc.). These fonts have GPL, Apache or OpenFont licensing.

So, here they go:

• Serifs: Biolinum, Charis SIL, CMU Concrete, CMU Typewriter Mono, Heuristica, Liberation Serif and Linux Libertine.
• and Sans-serifs: CMU Bright, Droid Sans, Graublau, Liberation Mono, Liberation Sans and M⁺ typefaces: 1C Light, 1P Regular, 1P Thin and 2P Regular.

Be careful, this page is showing live embedding examples here and now, so you probably should look at this page at my site, because only there fonts are embedded. And notice — these fonts took together near 15MiB.

Also, to see the examples, you should know, that font-embedding (OpenType and TrueType) works in next browsers: Firefox/3.5+, Opera/10+, Safari/3.1+, Google Chrome (Chromium) (how to make Google Chrome display remote fonts with @font-face) — all modrn browsers, except of Internet Explorer — it is able to draw fonts in it’s own format Embedded OpenType. Converting tool from Microsoft is free, but I don’t know yet if there are licensing issues with the convertion, but I’m going to research this. So you’d better catch my RSS.

Rendering issues on different OS and browsers

Different OS — different font rendering. Also, try this page in different browsers to see what’s going on. Moreover, remote fonts are not system-wide fonts, so rendering is really different.

IMHO, best font rendering is MacOS and Safari. Next is going Chrome in Linux, which is slightly better than Firefox and Opera in same Linux. And finally — Windows, where XP is the worst renderer.

In order to see the difference (or see the fonts, if you have Internet Explorer or old version of other browser), I’ve included “Reference Rendering” image near each font. Just click on it and see the difference, probably you use not the best browser, and missing something beautiful in the modern web. The reference pictures are in PNG format and made from this page in Chromium/4.0.220.1 (Developer build 27609) in Ubuntu Linux 9.04 Jaunty.

Biolinum

This font could be interesting, at least for headings, but it’s not very usable in a large amounts of plain texts. Rendering of this font in different OS and browsers are pretty good.

Reference Picture. Licensing: OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/

Charis SIL Regular

Good serif font for large texts, with easy reading. It’s also suitable for headings. While font supports wide range of Unicode, it has large size of font file — near 1MiB. Font has good rendering in most browsers.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=CharisSILFont

CMU Concrete

The typewriter-like typeface, like CMU Typewriter, but proportional. Good for headings.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: SIL OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/

CMU Bright

Just unstandard sans-serif, with interesting (and only suitable) rendering in Chrome and Safari.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: SIL OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/

CMU Typewriter (Mono)

True typewriter monospaced font, clone of CMU Concrete. I suppose it’s suitable even for console and development environments. But there could be hinting problems on Windows.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: SIL OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/

Droid Sans

Font with Android platform origins. IMHO best multi-purpose font, I use it as main system font in OS. Excellent hinting allows font usage in all sizes, excellent Unicode support and moderate size makes this font to be my #1.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: Apache License.
Download font for free: http://www.silvermail.ch/files/opensource_droid.zip

Graublau Web

#1 in webfonts.info web font list. Excellent for headings, but a bit narrow for main text.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: @font-face.
Download font for free: http://www.fonts.info/

Heuristica

Font based on Adobe Utopia, good serif for large texts.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: OpenFont License.
Download font for free: ftp://ftp.dvo.ru/pub/Font/heuristica/

Liberation Mono

Open-Source font that have the same metrics, as Monotype’s Courier New, standart monospaced font on Windows.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: GPLv2.
Download font for free: https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts

Liberation Serif

Open-Source font that have the same metrics, as Monotype’s Times New Roman, standart serif font on Windows.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: GPLv2.
Download font for free: https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts

Liberation sans

Open-Source font that have the same metrics, as Monotype’s Arial, standart serif font on Windows.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: GPLv2.
Download font for free: https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts

Linux Libertine

Interesting serif. Should be good at large sizes, at headings.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: OpenFont License.
Download font for free: http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/

M⁺ 1C Light

The М⁺ fonts are the art of fonts. This light sans-serif is good in reading, excellent in heading. I recommend it.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: Public Domain.
Download font for free: http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/webfonts/

M⁺ 1P Regular

A bit thicker than previous, but more suitable for main text.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: Public Domain.
Download font for free: http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/webfonts/

M⁺ 1P Thin

Superior extra-light font. Just for headings, but it could make your page extra-light.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: Public Domain.
Download font for free: http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/webfonts/

M⁺ 2P Regular

М⁺ 2* fonts has little difference in characters, but still easy recognizable М⁺.

Click to see reference picture. Licensing: Public Domain.
Download font for free: http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/webfonts/

Unfortunately, the might and powerful his magesty Google Chrome or Chromium is unable to download and display custom fonts. BTW, its closest relative, Apple Safari, which is also based on WebKit, able to display fonts from third version.

Fortunately, this is just an option by default. You just have to say it your desire to see downloadable fonts, via command line.

In Linux:

chromium-browser --enable-plugins --enable-remote-fonts %U

In MacOS:

/Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --enable-remote-fonts

In Windows that looks like this.

And than look at reference: http://www.css3.info/preview/web-fonts-with-font-face/ or (that’s excellent!) http://nicewebtype.com/fonts/graublau-sans-web. More about web-fonts at webfonts.info.

P.S. So, now I wonder if there is a command-line option, that will force Chrome to draw round-corners fine (I mean with anti-aliasing).

Via Paul Irish