14 December 2012, 15:49

The WOFF webfonts standard finally passes

Google already offers hundreds of fonts in WOFF format The publication of the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) recommendation means that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has now completed the process of standardising webfonts. WOFF is a container for the SFNT structure used in TrueType and OpenType fonts, which was originally developed for Apple's QuickDraw. According to the specification, a WOFF webfont is simply a repackaged SFNT font with compressible table data.

WOFF had already been implemented in the major browsers – including Chrome, Firefox and Safari – when the consortium published its first draft two years ago. According to caniuse.com only Opera Mini and the Android browser still offer no support for webfonts. Internet Explorer has supported them since version 9.0.

Webfonts can be added to CSS for inclusion in web documents using the @font-face rule. Google alone has more than 600 WOFF fonts available for free use.

(djwm)

« previous | next »

Print Version | Send by email | Permalink: http://h-online.com/-1769646