In the case of Typekit I find myself pining for open source.
With the service, founder Jeff Keen created another hosted Javascript API. This one renders hundreds of native fonts as text on any site. Web designers have dreamed of such opportunity outside of Flash, native to the browser for years. Any font, cross-browser, cross-system, pre-loaded from the web page, easy to design, easy to manage and SEO.
What’s wrong with it? For one, it’s centralized. Every site using the Typekit javascript widget is dependent on its infrastructure. For two, it’s a company with a product for profit, not a standard. Because fonts are central to any Web designer’s toolbox, a framework for displaying them should be standardized. Designer’s have already paid to license the fonts they use to design with. With Typekit, Keen wants them to pay again and depend on his service.
Imagine HTML sold as a product. Control of the core markup for rendering every Web page in existence would put too much power in the hands of the company that sold it. And that’s the problem with Typekit. We can’t go there.
My prediction is Typekit may be toyed with by designers until a suitable alternative rises from the HTML 5 standard.
