Let’s face it: Web-safe fonts are very limiting. Maybe a dozen fonts are out there that are widely enough adopted to be considered “Web safe,” and those ones aren’t exactly spectacular for much other than body type. Sure, Georgia, Arial or Times New Roman work just fine for the bulk of the text on your website, but what if you want something different for, let’s say, headings? Or pull quotes? What then?

You have a few options. Many people just opt for more elaborate CSS font stacks, with their preferred fonts up front. But that still leaves a big chunk of your visitors seeing the same old Web-safe fonts.

Enter dynamic text replacement. In addition to font stacks, why not replace the heading text with an image, embedded font, or bit of Flash? These methods are easier than they sound and the end result is that the vast majority of users will see the beautiful typography you want them to see. A word of warning, though: don’t use dynamic text replacement for all of the text on your page. All that would do is slow it down and frustrate your visitors. Instead, save it for headings, menu items, pull quotes and other small bits of text.