Remove @font-face for XP users

HTML & CSS
1

So here’s the dilemma. I’ve found a great open font I want to use for my copy text.

I used FontSquirrel generator to give me a kit to @font-face with, and embedded it into my code.

However, when viewed on XP (even with ClearType turned on), they all look like a**.

I added -webkit-font-smoothing: anti-aliased;

And now it looks fine in webkit browsers on XP.

But since FF and IE don’t have a similar property, it still looks crappy there.

Can any of you more advanced members think of a way to remove the embedded font from my stack for XP FF+IE users? Or even all of <Vista?

2

Two ways:

Server-side dynamic CSS. Client-side javascript CSS alteration.

Both based on UA sniffing.

3

I’ve always heard about javascript UA sniffing is bad.

Is this only for browser detection because it’s easy to falsify which browser you’re on, and instead should use feature detection?

What about using it for OS detection instead? Anything wrong with that?

4

Well, feature detection surely can’t provide you with the underlying OS.

This javascript sniff example can be useful?

And this PHP sniff example could help?

5

Think of everything bad you have heard about browser sniffing. OS sniffing is a million times worse. For one thing older browsers do not recognise newer operating systems and so do not report them correctly. For example the most recent operating system that IE6 can identify correctly is Windows NT. All subsequent versions of Windows are identified as versions of Windows NT rather than as Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7