@font-face and WOFF round up
Web fonts took a big step closer to reality last month with a few announcements regarding the Web Open Font Format or WOFF. A big hurdle to the implementation @font-face and font linking has been a two-fold issue of licensing:
- Not all fonts are licensed for embedding and linking on the web.
- Major browser developers have differing philosophies about where the responsibility for license compliance should fall.
Microsoft, for example, has not implemented @font-face, in part, because it believes in protecting type foundries from the potential intellectual property violations of embedded fonts.* Opera, Safari / WebKit, and Mozilla leave compliance to the developer and support @font-face property.
In late May, a Typekit private beta launch brought the issue of embedded fonts and licensing back to the forefront. Typekit is a hosted font service that allows developers to select from a library of type chosen and hosted by Typekit and licensed for the web.
Ars Technica speculated about the future of web typography in its July article, The hazy future of Web typography.
Late last month (October, 2009), type foundry House Industries announced its support for WOFF, stating that the format satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries, [and] offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues, and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType).
That same day, Mozilla announced that WOFF support would be available in Firefox 3.6.
Today (November 2, 2009) Ars Technica features an article with more background on last month’s announcements.
More about embedded web fonts
- Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is now available for download
- House Party (Zeldman’s round up)
- after Firefox 3.6 – new font control features for designers
- Mozilla Supports Web Open Font Format
- Typographic diversity for the web
- Seven Web Fonts showcases
- CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing
- An introduction to W3C Web Fonts
* Chris Wilson and Jeremy Keith had a rather heated debate about this subject at 2009’s South by Southwest “Browser Wars” panel. Chris Wilson, who was a part of the Internet Explorer development team at the time, made essentially this argument. Microsoft does, however, have its own format for embedding fonts on the web