Use The Ubuntu Font With Any Website / Browser In Ubuntu

WebUpd8 reader TP has sent us a tip regarding a post he wrote about getting all the websites to use the Ubuntu font on your system (or whatever fond the user sets as the default Desktop font - this should work with any browser you use) instead of the font they have specified in the CSS rules:

I have never liked the way most websites look on a default installation or Live CD, it doesn't do anything to impress the new user. I feel this is largely due the fonts mess in Linux.

On my blog I have a detailed explanation of getting the Ubuntu font to be the default font used by web browsers to display websites. The experimentation was carried out on Maverick.

I was blown away by how beautiful websites looked when they used the Ubuntu font. The font was fuller and smoother.

-TP

Check out his post for more info and instructions on setting this up: Getting the most out of the Ubunt font. There are some screenshots too - see THIS Picasa Web album.

Thanks to TP for the tip!

The Ubuntu Font Now Available For Any Website Through Google Font Directory

Google announced that the Ubuntu Font Family is now available in the Google Font Directory which makes it very easy to install for any website:

Through the magic of the Google Font API any web designer can now pick Ubuntu from the Google Font Directory and bring the beauty and legibility of the Ubuntu fonts to their websites too.

To use it on your website, head over to Google Font Directory, select the Ubuntu font variant you want to use and copy the code to the "head" section of your blog (above "</head>"). The code looks like this:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Ubuntu' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>

You can use the font for all the font on the website or only for some parts of it like the posts tile (like we are using it here, on WebUpd8). To only use it for the post titles, search for "h1" in your CSS code and add this:

font-family: 'Ubuntu', arial, serif; 

Ubuntu Font Family Uploaded To The Ubuntu 10.04, 9.10 And 8.04 Official Repositories

The Ubuntu Font Family, which was only available for Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 (in the official repositories) has just been uploaded to the official Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, 9.10 Karmic Koala and 8.04 Hardy Heron repositories.

Currently, the font can be found in the "Proposed" repository (but there shouldn't be any issues or regressions as it's just a font) and it should be soon moved to the "Backports" repository.

You could already install and stay up to date with the Ubuntu Font Family in Ubuntu 10.04 and 9.10 by using our Ubuntu Font Family PPA - by the way, you should still be using our PPA since we are usually faster then the Ubuntu official repositories at releasing updates.

See also:

• What Font To Use For Your Ubuntu Desktop? Try These!
• 7 Of The Best Ubuntu Terminal (Fixed Width) Fonts

Chrome Extension To Use The Ubuntu Font On All The Web Pages

If you like the new Ubuntu Font and use Chrome/ium, you can make all the web pages use the new font by installing a Chrome extension created by superpiwi @ UbuntuLife.

You'll of course need the Ubuntu font which is installed by default in Ubuntu 10.10 but if you're using an older Ubuntu version, you can either download it from HERE or use our Ubuntu Font public PPA.

Install Ubuntu 10.10 (unified font style) Chrome extension

Public Ubuntu Font Family PPA For Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx And 9.10 Karmic Koala

The Ubuntu Font Family has been made default in Ubuntu 10.10, it can be downloaded from Launchpad and there are download links available on http://font.ubuntu.com too, yet the Ubuntu Font PPA is still private which makes it difficult for those not using Ubuntu 10.10 to stay up to date with the latest versions of the font.

So I've decided to make a PPA for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx users so they can easily install the Ubuntu Font Family and also receive updates (I'll backport each version in Maverick for Karmic and Lucid). Add the PPA and install the Ubuntu Font using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/ubuntu-font-family
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-font-family

Like I said, the PPA currently holds packages of the Ubuntu Font Family for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala but on request, I can also upload packages for Ubuntu Jaunty (do we have readers still using Jaunty?).

Ubuntu Font Will Be Default In 10.10

A recent update in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (it probably didn't reach the users yet) sets the Ubuntu font as the default Application, Window title, and Desktop font for Ubuntu 10.10:

ubuntu-artwork (53.7) maverick; urgency=low

* debian/gconf-defaults
- Set default Application, Window title, and Desktop fonts
to "Ubuntu"

The default font size will be set to 11 (instead of 10).

For now, the font has only been set as default for the Ubuntu Desktop edition; Kubuntu will not be getting the Ubuntu font by default and regarding the Ubuntu Netbook Edition (or the other Ubuntu flavors), no info is available at this time.


Update: you can now install the Ubuntu Font Family from a public PPA.

The Ubuntu Font Family Is Now Available In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (Officially)

The new Ubuntu font ("Ubuntu Font Family") has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat official repositories and is now shipped with both Ubuntu desktop and netbook editions according to the Ubuntu meta and Netbook meta changelogs:

Refreshed dependencies
* Added ttf-ubuntu-font-family to desktop

Update: the font will be shipped with Kubuntu 10.10 too.

The font however is not used by default on any Ubuntu flavor! As bug 649616 points out, the decision on making this the default font for Ubuntu 10.10 has not been taken yet.

Licence

The Ubuntu Font Family has been released as a Libre font, licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0:

Canonical are working with SFLC and SIL on a revision of the OFL with the intent of adopting that revision for a future version of the Ubuntu Font Family. This Ubuntu Font Licence serves as an interim licence until that is complete. Source

That's because the license still needs some clarifications.

How to download / install the Ubuntu font

If you're using Ubuntu 10.10 all you have to do is run an upgrade and the new Ubuntu font should be installed with the updates. Alternatively, you can install the font using the following command:

sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-font-family

If you're not using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, you can download the Ubuntu Font Family as an archive or deb from HERE although the recommended way of getting the font is through the official PPA (still private, hopefully it will be made public soon) so you can get updates!

There's still work to be done!

The font is not ready for all the languages and there are missing glyphs for Arabic, Armenian, Georgian to name just a few. In case this will be made the default Ubuntu 10.10 font in the final release, the old font will be used for these languages. As a side note, the font name has been changed from "UbuntuBeta" to "Ubuntu" which means the font is no longer considered beta.


The Ubuntu Font Family will also be made available as a webfont which you'll be able to use on your website. It is considered to make it available on both http://font.ubuntu.com and on Google's Webfonts directory: http://code.google.com/webfonts

Update: you can now install the Ubuntu Font Family from a public PPA.

New Way To Get The New Official Ubuntu Font Family

In case you don't know, the new Ubuntu font which is supposed to be shipped with Ubuntu 10.10 is only available in a private PPA for now.

A while back we posted about getting the official Ubuntu font by joining the Kubuntu-users group. There were way too many people joining this group so it was revoked access to the private PPA. In a discussion with Paul Sladen, he pointed to a new way regular users can get access to the Ubuntu Font Family private PPA: go to https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-typeface-interest and click "Join this team" (you'll of course need a Launchpad account). You should receive an email when you have been accepted to this team (it will take a while - I'm not sure how long). When this happens, do not install the deb! Add the PPA so you can stay up to date with the latest versions of the font!

Important: only join this group if you are willing to provide genuine feedback or need to work on a project like making a video for Ubuntu 10.10! Also: most people will be accepted into this group. However, if you have just created a Launchpad account and/or have 0 Launchpad karma, it might take a while until you're accepted.

Paul also mentioned a bug about the leaked Ubuntu font (not the font in the private PPA) which caused a lot of trouble for both the Ubuntu and Chromium developers: the font causes Chromium to segfault. Again: that is the unofficial, very old ripped off font and not the official one in the private PPA we are writing about! If you are using that font you should uninstall it as it is very buggy.

For more info, see this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu%20Font%20Family#Howto and our old post on the Ubuntu Font Family - it includes screenshots and info on what to do once you've got access to the Ubuntu Font private PPA.


More:
Instructions and Rationale: http://design.canonical.com/2010/07/the-ubuntu-font/
Found a bug? Report it here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family

Update: you can now install the Ubuntu Font Family from a public PPA.

The New Ubuntu (10.10) Font Available For (almost) Everyone To Download [PPA]

Update: you can now install the Ubuntu Font Family from a public PPA.

After finally getting the bold version last week, the Ubuntu font which will be default in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is finally available for (almost) everyone. Why almost? Here is an email from the Kubuntu-users mailing list:

Members of the ~kubuntu-users team on launchpad can now test out the Ubuntu Font which is currently in beta testing. Anyone can join this team.

We are considering setting this as the default screen font in 10.10, opinions welcome but please include a rationale with your opinion, artwork is very easy to criticize but is hard to criticize well.

The Ubuntu font was expected to be available for everyone starting with August 8, but since anyone can join the ~kubuntu-users, you can already start testing it. It will probably be available in a public PPA starting with August, 8.

Update: the old instructions no longer work. Here is a new and official way to get access to the private PPA. Go to https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-typeface-interest and click "Join this team" (you'll of course need a Launchpad account). You should receive an email when you have been accepted to this team. When this happens, do not install the deb! Add the PPA so you can stay up to date with the latest versions of the font!

Important: only join this group if you are willing to provide genuine feedback! Also: most people will be accepted into this group. If you have just created a Launchpad account and/or have 0 karma however, it might take a while until you're accepted.

Upon being accepted, go to https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-font-beta-testing for the instructions. Read them carefully, then go to the PPA and read the instructions again. Don't just add the PPA - > you'll have to manually add the private PPA to your sources.list! Also, don't manually download the Uubntu font .deb files as you won't get any updates!

 

Note: clicking the last 2 links in the post without having gained access (by joining the Kubuntu users team or some other team which has access to the font), you'll get a "page not found" error.

Update: the mail on the Kubuntu mailing list also mentions that the Ubuntu font looks great with Auto Hinting, which you can enable using the following command:

sudo ln -sf /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

Then log out and log back in.

Here is how the new Ubuntu font looks on the desktop, with auto hinting and antialiasing for "best contrast" and "subpixel smoothing":

(Best contrast)

(Subpixel smoothing)

The Ubuntu font was only available for the Ubuntu members (if you don't know what that is, you're not one) until now.

Also read:

• Instructions and Rationale: http://design.canonical.com/2010/07/the-ubuntu-font/
• Font testing tool and bug submission: http://fonttest.design.canonical.com/
• We've started to add non-Latin character languages to help test the font, please see here: http://design.canonical.com/2010/07/native-readers-extending-the-beta/

Update: you can now install the Ubuntu Font Family from a public PPA.

Would It Be Fair To Publish The Original Ubuntu 10.10 Font On WebUpd8?

You probably know that Ubuntu 10.10 will get a brand new font. And you probably also know that the font is only available for the Ubuntu members right now (in private beta).

Let's say that searching Google, I came across the original new Ubuntu font (and by original I mean the actual font which is in private beta, not the one extracted from an old PDF which you can already download from lots of websites - that's very old has major issues by the way). The font comes up in Google by mistake. That means that anyone can find it by searching for the right thing.

Would it be fair to publish a download link on WebUpd8?


Note regarding the screenshot: I use sharp fonts settings, so the font will probably look different on your computer. Also, the letter "U" is missing from the Gloobus Preview because of a bug in Gloobus. As you can see, the letter is there in Font Viewer.


Update: you (the majority) said it wouldn't be fair, so we're not going to publish it. Thank you for the comments! Until the Ubuntu font will be released in public beta (August, 8), there are plenty of fonts to try. See these for instance (read the comments too).

What Font To Use For Your Ubuntu Desktop? Try These!

A lot of people have been asking us to write an article on what fonts to use in Ubuntu, so here it is. These are my favourite fonts and among the few I can use but of course that may not be the case for everybody, so you can share your favourite font(s) in the comments!


A note: these fonts might not look very different, but that's because they are not intended for logos and such - they are designed for readability. Also, you can't tell how good/bad a font really is until you try it on your own computer.

1. Aller

(Click to enlarge)

Is it just me or does Aller look a lot like the new Ubuntu font?

Download Aller font

2. Lucida Grande (Mac font)

(Click to enlarge)

Download Lucida Grande font

3. PT Sans

(Click to enlarge)

Download PT Sans

4. Luxi Sans

(Click to enlarge)

Install Luxi Sans in Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install ttf-xfree86-nonfree

5. Lucida Sans

(Click to enlarge)

You can install it in Ubuntu using the following command:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-fonts

For the last 2 fonts I kept the obvious choices (which shouldn't miss from any fonts related post):

6. Droid Sans

(Click to enlarge)

Install it in Ubuntu using the following command:

sudo apt-get install ttf-droid

7. Liberation Sans - the font licensed by Red Hat

(Click to enlarge)

It's installed by default in Ubuntu but just in case, you can install it with:

sudo apt-get install ttf-liberation

In case you don't know, to install a font you manually download (not installed via repositories) in the latest Ubuntu 10.04, all you have to do is double click it and then click the "Install" button. Then, to change the font, go to System > Preferences > Appearence, on the "Font" tab.



Update: like you've requested, here is also a post on: 7 Of The Best Ubuntu Terminal (Fixed Width) Fonts


In other font related news, Canonical released the new Ubuntu font for testing yesterday - but in private beta only. You could extract it from the existing PDFs, but it's not all that good (just search Google for "how to extract font from PDF").

Font Face And Size Widget For Blogger

This font face and size widget is mainly for Blogger blogs but should work on any website actually.

How Font Face And Size Widget works

Put it in your blog sidebar and the user can then change the font size and font face (Times New Roman, Tahoma, Trebuchet Ms, Verdana, Book Antiqua, Bookman Old Style, Comic Sans Ms, Arial and entury Gothic).

You can view it in action on my test blog (although usually, widgets don't stay too much on that blog so it will probably only be available for a few days).

Implementing Font Face And Size Widget in Blogger

Go to your Layout > Page Elements and click on "Add a Gadget" where you want to add it, then select a HTML / JavaScript widget and paste this inside your new widget:

[via technology world]

How to Install Fonts in Linux

The first thing you need to do before installing fonts in Linux is open the fonts.conf file to find out your fonts location. To do this, open /etc/fonts/fonts.conf with a text editor. Inside this file you will see the locations of your fonts. Now you can copy fonts to any location mentioned in this file. Common font locations in Linux include:

/usr/share/fonts
/usr/local/share/fonts
/home/<username>/.fonts

(where <username> = your username)

To install fonts, run the following command in a terminal (you can replace the fonts location with any location from the fonts.conf file):

gksu nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype

and create a new directory. Put the fonts you want to install into this new directory.

Finally, update the font cache with the command:

sudo fc-cache -f -v

Log out and login back to see changes.

[via techie-buzz]

Make Windows (Wine) Applications Integrate Better With KDE 4.2 / 4.3

Use the following command to open Wine registry editor:

wine regedit

and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel and delete the key called "Colors". Now open Kate or any other text editor and paste this in a new blank file:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"ActiveBorder"="239 239 239"
"ActiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"AppWorkSpace"="198 198 191"
"Background"="93 77 52"
"ButtonAlternativeFace"="200 0 0"
"ButtonDkShadow"="85 85 82"
"ButtonFace"="239 239 239"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonLight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonShadow"="198 198 191"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GradientActiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"GrayText"="198 198 191"
"Hilight"="103 141 178"
"HilightText"="0 0 0"
"InactiveBorder"="239 239 239"
"InactiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"InactiveTitleText"="255 255 255"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="200 0 0"
"Menu"="239 239 239"
"MenuBar"="0 0 0"
"MenuHilight"="179 145 105"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="239 239 239"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"Window"="255 255 255"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"

And save this file under any name you want, but make sure it's extension is .reg

Now open Regedit again:

wine regedit

Then select Import and import the newly created .reg file.


And another fix for Adobe Photoshop CS2:

After installing Photoshop CS2, some people have issues regarding the font used by the application dialogs. To fix this, download the Tahoma font and copy it (tahoma.ttf) to:

/home/user/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts/

Credits (info & image): ubucentrum.net