No one can deny that Arabic is one of the best looking written languages out there, it’s considered a highly sophisticated art form in addition of it being a communication medium. Yet because of the known web restrictions, we’re stuck with a few standard (dull looking) Arabic fonts on the web.

Tiba3a aims to solve the problem of displaying varied and beautiful Arabic fonts on websites, in a way that looks consistent across all browsers, it’s a platform that hosts fonts and allow anyone to use them in an easy and fast way.

On a technical level, Tiba3a will depend on the new generation of browsers, with the ability to link to a font. The service will work through securely hosting the fonts source files on our server and providing a licensing scheme for websites willing to make use of the fonts.

Tiba3a will offer a solid level of protection that protects the rights of type owners and designers and makes it impossible for anyone to get a copy of the used font.

This service is inspired by Typekit, which launched a few months ago to tackle the same issue for English fonts. It opened our eyes to the possibility of doing the same for Arabic fonts.

We’re already in talks with some Arabic fonts foundries, and we’re planning to include all of them as part of the project; hoping for their cooperation, because the success of this project will mainly hinge on them and their involvement. There’s not much we can do on our own in such an endeavor.

We encourage all interested parties - especially Arabic fonts foundries - to get in touch us, to make this project a reality and help us evolve the Arabic web.