WOFF - Programming Blog

Posts Tagged ‘WOFF’

3 Nov 2009

For some time, sIFR has been the go-to technology for web designers attempting to expand the Internet’s typographical vocabulary without sacrificing machine readability. However, adoption and use have been limited, and the roster of fully functional online fonts has remained a static and brief cast of players.

Recently, a consortium of type designers and web designers have gathered around Web Open Font Format (WOFF). With support from Mozilla announced with the release of Firefox 3.6, and with the advocacy of leading type foundries such as Linotype, Emigre, and Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the question of web fonts might be satisfactorily resolved in the near future.

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In a blog post, Mozilla contributor John Daggett wrote, “The WOFF format originated from a collabaration between the font designers Erik van Blokland and Tal Leming with help from Mozilla’s Jonathan Kew. Each had proposed their own format and WOFF represents a melding of these different proposals. The format itself is intended to be a simple repackaging of OpenType or TrueType font data, it doesn’t introduce any new behavior, alter the @font-face linking mechanism or affect the way fonts are rendered. Many font vendors have expressed support for this new format so the hope is this will open up a wider range of font options for web designers.”

Of course, Firefox 3.6 will be the first browser to support the new format, so designers will need to include @font-face rules for other browsers, at least for the time being. Not surprisingly, creating such rules for Internet Explorer is more complicated than for other browsers, as IE only plays nicely with Embedded Open Type faces and a limited set of @font-face rule descriptors.

Internet Explorer wonkiness aside, WOFF is a widely supported and relatively prominent step in the right direction, and we hope more browser versions will support the format. It’s about time for web pages to lose their homogeneity, for designers to gain more tools for brand and personal expression, for search engines to read more fonts, and for users to have richer browsing experiences.

Interested web developers and designers should also check out woffTools,a Python package for examining and manipulating WOFF files. This package also contains a set of command line tools for verifying and examining the files.

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Tags: Erik van Blokland, font, font vendors, format, John Daggett, Jonathan Kew, Jones, time, type foundries, Web, web fonts, WOFF

With Firefox 3.6, Mozilla Aims to Speed up Web Browsing

In: web resources

2 Nov 2009

The latest update to the Firefox web browser has now been made available. Released Friday evening, Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 promises a number of new features, including built-in theme support and drag-and-drop file uploads, but perhaps most importantly, there is a renewed focus on browser speed. Claiming improved JavaScript performance, better overall responsiveness, and faster startup times, there’s no doubt Firefox’s development in these areas has been fueled, at least in part, by the speed increases achieved by its rivals, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

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What’s New in Firefox 3.6

In the latest edition of the Firefox browser, the team has introduced the following new features:

Built-in support for Personas, Firefox’s themeing system which lets you browse through a gallery of skins and apply different ones with just a click
Plugin alerts: Firefox will now alert users if their plugins are out-of-date, a useful addition since older plugins can lead to performance problems and even security issues.
Open native videos can now be viewed full-screen
Drag-and-drop features: In the beta, you can drag and drop files from your computer into the browser allowing you to easily upload files from your PC to web sites.
Support for the WOFF font format
Support for CSS, DOM, HTML5, and other developer features
Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time

Why Speed Matters

Although Firefox and its rival web browsers are all fighting to best Internet Explorer in terms of install base, they still pit themselves against each other with their unique features, being first to offer support for new standards, and of course, web browser performance.

It’s in this last area that Firefox has struggled recently. Past builds showed Firefox beaten by the up-and-comer Google Chrome in boot-up, page-loading, and JavaScript performance. Despite Chrome’s low market share of only around 4%, no company can safely ignore the competition when that competition is Google (just look at what Google did to the GPS market last week!).

Chrome may be a relatively unknown browser among mainstream users for now, but if Google holds true to their promises to launch their netbook operating system, Google Chrome OS, which uses the Chrome browser to run applications, there could be a whole new user base of Walmart shoppers who rapidly make a browser switch without even realizing it. And with Chrome’s primary focus on browser speed, designed from the ground-up with the idea of running intensive web applications, Mozilla knows that one day Chrome could end up being serious competition…at least once the large majority of computing moves to the cloud. In fact, that day may have already arrived for some of today’s web users.

To improve browser performance, Mozilla introduced a new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey in Firefox 3.5. Many of the speed increases in 3.6 can now be attributed to this technology. However, TraceMonkey has to go up against Chrome’s own proprietary system, V8, which Google optimized earlier this year to give their browser a 30% speed bump.

Of course, we’ll need to see some formal tests completed before determining where the browsers stand today, but it’s likely going to be a situation where the engines are neck-and-neck in terms of performance. While this aspect to the browser war may go unnoticed by most web surfers, it’s the sort of situation where everyone wins. And the prize will be a faster web surfing experience, no matter which browser you choose to use.

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Tags: beta, browser, Chrome, DOM, file uploads, Firefox, firefox browser, firefox web browser, Performance, screen drag, Web, WOFF

House Party

In: web resources

31 Oct 2009

Real fonts on the web: House Industries supports WOFF format.

…a font format for the Web that satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries. …WOFF, offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType).

WOFF has the support of a wide spectrum of the type community; from peers such as Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, etc and larger foundries such as Linotype and Monotype. Today it has also gained the support of Mozilla in the their release of Firefox 3.6 (Mozilla has a full list of designers and foundries that support WOFF on that page). We hope and expect that WOFF will quickly gain support in other major browsers as we support, endorse and expect to license our library for use on the Web in the WOFF format in the future.

The Problem: We have the fonts, we have the CSS and the workaround for IE. What we don’t have is beautiful, reliable, consistent cross-platform rendering of real fonts like Gotham, Franklin, Garamond, etc. — 29 October 2009
Web Fonts and Standards: How real fonts work on the web via standard CSS. Making it work in IE. The licensing hurdle. Rise of the middlemen and their effect on the adoption of font embedding standards. — 17 August
Web Fonts Now, for Real: David Berlow of The Font Bureau publishes a proposal for a permissions table enabling real fonts to be used on the web without binding or other DRM. — 16 July 2009
Web Fonts Now (How We’re Doing With That): Commercial foundries that allow @font-face embedding; browser support; Cufón and SIFR, oh, my; Adobe, web fonts, and EOT; Typekit debuts; — 23 May 2009