What's up with web fonts?

- [Announcer] This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. (phone ringing) - [Instructor] Hello. - Martin, it's me and I need help. I don't understand what's happening. The website looks fine on my computer at home, but when I look at it on my computer at work, it's completely different. - [Instructor] Can you be a bit more specific? What looks different? - The font, the font is totally different. On my computer, it's this nice big swooshy handwriting font, but at work, it's just a standard Word document font, what's happening? - [Instructor] Right, I think I know what's going on here and you're not going to like it. On the web, you can't just use any font you like, that's not how fonts on the web work. - So what's that mean? - [Instructor] It means, at least for now, you are stuck with that boring Word document font. - But why? I told you it works fine on my computer. - I know, but there's nothing I can do about it. The technology just isn't there yet. Sorry. - That is so annoying. All right, thanks. - [Instructor] Have you ever wondered why fonts on the web don't seem to work like fonts on your computer? Why typography on the web seems to be a thing we've only just started talking about in the last couple of years. My name is Morgan R. Hendrickson and this is "Backgrounder Web Fonts." (upbeat music) I want to talk about typography on the web. In particular, web font. I want to explain why you can't just find any font you like and use it on your website and why it can take decades for the web to implement such a seemingly straightforward feature as picking what font you want to use. (upbeat music)