Dynamic Text Replacement

When building web pages one of the biggest problems is using a font that will be available on all the potential viewers so that it can be displayed in the browser. To get around this problem most web developers resorting to using a graphical editor and create a static graphic with the formatted text required. This works fine for text that is static and will never change, but for headings or toolbars where the text will change or you do not know what the text will be at development this static image option will not work.

One of my favorite sites A List Apart has an article that outlines another approach. Stewart Rosenberger uses an approach of a server side script to transform the text into an image that is automatically added to the page rather than a static image. This allows for any font to be used (as long as it is installed on the server) and displayed in an image dynamically.