I’m implementing Joe Workman’s Font Pro stack and fronts from Hoefler & Co. I’d really like to use small caps, but they’re not supported in Safari.
Is there a way (stacks/CSS/html) to load a fallback font style in Safari? I love the small caps, but would prefer for my Safari visitors to not have to discern what the random characters mean.
If you load a Hoefler small caps variant of the font then it will work in any browser and you will not degrade the quality as the lower case glyph set is actually designed in uppercase form but with a reduced height.
Using CSS small caps is always undesirable, particularly when paying for high quality fonts such as H & Co. By applying a CSS small cap you are in fact creating a synthetic version of a capital glyph that is just shrunk in size (also known as faux rendering). This will be detrimental to the display quality and the kerning pair definitions.
Thanks @tav!
So I’m using Font Pro and a subscription to Hoefler’s cloud.typography. I have the font style with small caps, but I can’t figure out where to call it in.
What am I missing?
You will need to make sure that your kit is set up correctly to use the small caps variant. The only way to determine which font is loaded in the hoefler child stack is via the weight. If you can make sure that the small caps variant is the only one in your kit at that particular weight and put it in its own font family child stack then you should be good. Steer clear of the Font Styles small caps setting though as that does not interact with the hoefler kit settings but merely applies a CSS synthetic small caps as described above.
The only problem I see you running into is if you need Archer at the same weight in non small caps (i.e. also have that in your kit) then the browser will probably just default to loading the normal (book) variant.
I’ll have a look in my h&Co dashboard as soon as I get a chance but I’m not sure if any of my 5 licensed fonts have small caps off the top of my head. If they have, I will experiment and get back to you.
Success!
Thanks for your help @tav. Your thoughts got the gears turning and I found what I needed in the Hoefler & Co help manual. Didn’t know what to look for before your helpful suggestions.
All is working well now!
Good news. Glad its all working for you. I love Hoefler fonts, they are super crisp albeit a little pricey.
