My boss wants to create his own custom font using Photoshop, paint, or illustrator. He wants each letter to be multicolored or change colors and possibly have shadowing and wants to use this in his web site so that when people enter text it is not the simple black and white text you normally see. I have researched and know that you can create custom fonts with a font creator, but is it possible using code (java script or php) to insert the individual letter/symbol image into the text box or by using event handlers in Dreamweaver or with CSS. If so does anyone have a possible example or a site that you know does this. All help would be much appreciated.
You could use @font-face(http://www.font-face.com/) to embed your custom font in the web page, then use some javascript(an algorithm to color every other letter) + CSS3(custom colors) to get the desired effect that your boss is looking for.
I recommend using @font-face or google web fonts rather than Cufon for performance reasons.
Good luck!
I agree with Dale that you should create an actual font and include it in your CSS. Rather than using Adobe products intended for photo editing and general graphic design, you should use a tool that is specifically designed for fonts, like FontForge or one of the many commercial applications available.
For special effects, you may be able to achieve what you want using a jQuery add-on like textgrad or wrapSelection, or another "Animation and Effects" plugin.
If you want to replace text with an image, there are some StackOverflow questions that cover the topic. Check out this or this.
If you have trouble integrating these with an HTML form, you should make a new StackOverflow question that includes the code from your attempt (preferably in an easily-reproduced way so that people answering your question can test things).
You can easily add custom fonts to a website using @font-face. Note: You'll need to convert the font into several different formats to support all the major browsers. Luckily there's an automated way of doing this for free at:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator
Good luck creating a multi-coloured font! :)