The web’s abuzz with talk of expanding the range of fonts we can use in web pages.

Apparently, this is important. This is something we want. Designers often throw their hands up, exasperated, at how difficult it is to use, say, Caslon for headlines.

And yet…how often do you actually encounter this frustration? Not just as a designer, but in normal web life. Yes, it might be really good to be able to use Meta Sans because that’s what the corporate brochure is set in. But I bet it’s more of a concern that an optician uses tiny text and a light grey on a white background.

Perhaps, as Joe Clark says, there is no broad clamour among web designers to use any font they want.

What do annoy are the same old bugbears: crap layouts, unreadable text, stupid “features”, Flash abuse, unnavigable IA, MMN etc. etc. With a handful of fonts, most of which have been designed to be read from a screen (—even at small sizes) we still get the basics wrong. Take this CSS expert’s blog. Can you spot the links? And just a few months ago the body copy itself was bolded in order to make it readable.

But the Skolar does indeed look lovely.

There are even advantages to using a handful of safe web fonts — it reduces the chances of making a mistake. Clients can’t ask for a completely inappropriate font for their site’s body copy because that’s what they use in their print material. It’s fun working within a tight set of rules.

Font stacks aren’t all bad

I’m certainly not against being able to use more über fonts in web pages: I guess I agree with Mark Pilgrim on this. Instead of worrying about the licensing perhaps we should use free fonts like Skolar Calluna — or even stick to font stacks. That way the great unwashed get Arial while all your designer friends can revel in Gotham.