title: Well rendered webfont solution
body: <p><em>The challenge:</em></p>
  
  <p><strong>Provide dynamic web fonts that render acceptably across all major browsers, devices and Operating Systems</strong></p>
  
  <p><em>The story:</em></p>
  
  <p>So I had used cufon or sifr in the past and had since abandoned both in favor of @font-face. After using @font-face in production for some time, I made a horrifying discovery. Many fonts (most?) look like crap in Windows XP, regardless of browser. Even in google chrome, XP renders the fonts unacceptably jagged and ugly. </p>
  
  <p>I am aware of why this is happening. After reading many excellent posts on ye olde stack overflow, I understand the issue is NOT of font hinting, but of XP having clear-type set to off be default. So ALL fonts are jagged in XP by default regardless of application.</p>
  
  <p>So... if @font-face works great everywhere BUT XP with clear-type off, and is still superior to cufon what should we be doing?</p>
  
  <p><em>Possible solutions:</em></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>@font-face as default, Cufon with user agent sniffing for windows XP.
  (currently using, and very much not loving it) </li>
  <li>@font-face alone with yet unknown method of forcing clear-type</li>
  <li>Cufon alone :(</li>
  <li>Another paradigm all together</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><em>Failed solutions:</em></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Adobe Typekit (jagged in XP on their own website!, even though they show a smooth specimen jpeg)</li>
  <li>Google Webfonts (same problem with XP)</li>
  <li>@font-face alone (same problem with XP)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Cufon so far works everywhere, but just sucks, and offers additional challenges if you are animating anything, or wish to update the text after the fact.</p>
  
  <p>Do you have a solution that works completely cross browser and cross OS? What is the best way to handle this?</p>