Web Fonts from Ascender is a new service to format websites with CSS @font-face using licensed downloadable fonts. Web Fonts eliminate the hassles and expense of using Flash, JavaScript or image replacement techniques for headlines. Web Fonts from Ascender also offers high quality text fonts for web designers to extend their typographic choice beyond the limited set of ‘web-safe’ fonts.

The Ascender team is renowned for its expertise in fonts designed for on-screen legibility. All of the Web Fonts meet Ascender’s quality standards for rendering at text or headline sizes. Currently there are over 200 fonts available for licensing as Web Fonts. Ascender is working with each of its type designer and foundry partners to select additional fonts to offer through its Web Fonts service, and more announcements are expected in the near future.

Ascender’s Web Font service supports every major web browser, including mobile Safari found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Current web browsers with web font support include Internet Explorer 5+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 2.0+, Safari and Mobile Safari 3.1+ and Opera 10+.

Web Fonts from Ascender is offered as a subscription service and leverages the Windows® Azure™ cloud computing services platform to provide fast, reliable delivery of fonts throughout the world. The benefits of the Ascender Web Fonts hosted service include affordability, ease of use, speed of implementation and automatic updates to address new web browser versions. Ascender also offers a self-hosting option for large website developers.

“Creating beautiful typography on the web can be a daunting task, but we’ve risen to the challenge to simplify the process” said Bill Davis, vice president at Ascender. “Our Web Fonts service lets web designers eliminate the task of converting text to graphics, streamlining their web development, enhancing W3C compliance and improving site usability.”

Web Fonts from Ascender is affordably-priced to meet the needs of all sizes of websites. For smaller the websites the price of an annual subscription is one half the cost of a traditional desktop license. This annual fee includes web font hosting and download services. Other options are offered for larger sites, including a self-hosted option for sites with more than 600,000 unique visitors a month. A free 30 day trial is offered for designers to try the Web Fonts service.

For more information on the Web Fonts service from Ascender visit: http://www.ascenderfonts.com/webfonts/