Monotype Imaging has launched the public beta of Fonts.com Web Fonts, the company's new sites for Web-focussed typefaces. The cloud-based service allows webpage designers, and other content creators access a wide range of fonts for designing websites, and advertising.

Web Fonts offers over 2,000 high-quality fonts available now for free public beta, with approximately 7,000 fonts expected by commercial launch later this year. The fonts availabie include Helvetica, Frutiger and Univers, which Monotype says are available for the first time as Web fonts.

The faces support more than 40 languages, which cover the majority of languages used on the Internet. A wide range of world language typefaces are available, including fonts that support major Asian languages that contain thousands of characters. New patent-pending Web technology from Monotype Imaging is used to speed the delivery of languages that contain large character sets, such as Chinese and Japanese.

Hosted on a cloud-based, global distribution network of servers, Monotype Imaging's Web font solution downloads fonts dynamically to Internet browsers, resulting in fonts that are displayed on connected client machines. The service complies with W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specifications for deploying server-based fonts and supports all major Internet browsers, including the Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera platforms.

In addition to a fee-based subscription model, an entry level tier with access to more than 2,000 fonts will be offered at the conclusion of the public beta with no payment required, when Fonts.com Web Fonts launches commercially. At that time, beta participants will have the option to upgrade to a higher tier or continue at the free level. Further information on the subscription model will become available at the commercial launch.