Why would they use an image to show the fonts? Don't they offer a product that allows you to embed fonts? I tried interacting with the text (e.g. selecting it) and ended up dragging an image file around.
Performance. Embedding 18 fonts via CSS would add a lot of weight and the browsers (particularly mobile safari) don't cope too well when you embed too many fonts at once.
I guess in a blog post announcing new fonts I would expect to see the system in action. If performance is an issue then I won't want to buy your product, right? All I'm saying is I'm surprised you're not using your own product on a product announcement blog post :-).
On the other hand, I suppose most websites only embed one or two unique fonts.
As a typekit user, I have insight into this. It's as PaulHammond said: Embedding fonts means downloading a copy of the whole font.
TypeKit tracks how big the font files are. Each font might only be ~20-30K - but that's one weight/style. If you use multiple weights and styles, that's 20-30K per each. It's easy to rack up 3-4 weights, and of course I want italics on some of those == 4 weights times 2 italics times 3 fonts = 20-30k times 24 and now we're talking half a meg or so...
If I'm demoing 18 fonts on a page, even at a single weight and style - that's approaching half a meg right there.
I think using an image is the right call.
But if you want to see TypeKit in action (I get no benefit from pushing them - I'm just a satisfied user), here's a couple of sites I'm using it on:
Are you hoping to use it for running text? Our corp site is Typekit, and it works just fine with Safari 5 (we're an all-Mac shop). But we're not trying to set body text in Minion or anything; we use a neutral sans for the body, and FF DIN for heds and subheds.
We're not aware of any issues in Safari 5 - could you drop an email to support@typekit.com with an example URL showing the problems so we can look into it?
