It's somewhat amazing to think that despite the technological advancement seen on the web over the past decade, web designers are still pretty much relegated to using a relatively small group of web safe fonts when designing websites.

While it's easy to forget about the role fonts play in creating a compelling aesthetic, any decent print designer, for instance, knows just how important they can be.

Because the number of fantastic fonts in existence far exceeds the number of fonts that are web safe, web designers are forced to settle for web safe fonts, use graphic text instead of HTML text, or implement JavaScript-based solutions like cufón or the Google Font API.

But thanks to the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) technology that is being worked on by the W3C, font angst may one day be a thing of the past.

WOFF relies on a CSS element, @font-face, which directs a web browser to a location at which the font specified by a designer can be downloaded. WOFF also incorporates compression technology to speed download time of fonts.

More: http://econsultancy.com/blog/6448-will-snazzy-web-fonts-soon-be-a-reality

I use @font-face for most sites I design now. More browsers seem to be supporting it better. I hope IE9 is going to be one of them that supports CSS3.