Typekit For Arabophones: Arabic Fonts When You Want Them

Angolphone (and speakers of languages with similar alphabets) have many tools available to work with type on the web. As design becomes more sophistocated, designers need better and better tools to manage fonts online. TypeKit, for example, is a tool that will allow designers to use embeded professional fonts without requiring the end-user to download new fonts, however, the foundries and designers currently working on the project do not have plans to include non-Western fonts.

The lack of Arabic fonts available for Windows, Apple, and Linux systems has long frustrated arabophone web designers, especially as they see their anglopphone (and Western language) counterparts able to take advantage of tools like the aforementioned TypeKit.

Dubai baised CloudAppers things they have a solution in their new web service, Tiba3a. ArabCrunch reports:

Tiba3a will host host the fonts on its server and website who needs them, only need to copy and past a small Javascript code on their websites and they are good to go. Tiba3a currently supporting Safari 3.2.+ – Firefox 3.2 +and – IE in the future.

The service is planning to partner with the owners and the designers of the fonts, who would offer their fonts and Tiba3a will share the revenues it generate from licensing fees it gets from the websites that use them.

While the service still lacks enough typefaces to launch, CloudAppers has partnered with several Arabic foundries to produce the necessary fonts.