Media Alert: W3C's Web Open Font Format (WOFF) 2.0 significantly improves compression efficiency and lowers network bandwidth in fast decompression of font data

Dear Media, Analysts and Friends of W3C,

W3C is pleased to annouce that Web Open Font Format (WOFF) File Format 2.0, now a W3C Recommendation. WOFF 2.0 is deployed in all major Web browsers, 70% of major websites now use Web Fonts.

Web fonts are an important Web typography tool which allow Web designers to use fonts that are not installed on the viewer's computer. Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is a font packaging format designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of font data with significantly better compression than previous techniques. 

For more information, please see our Media Advisory here  (and text version below).  Please contact us if you'd like more information or to schedule an interview. 
Yours sincerely,
Amy van der Hiel
W3C Media Relations Coordinator
w3t-pr@w3.org
+1.617.253.5628





   [1]W3C Media Advisory  For immediate release

      [1] 
https://www.w3.org/


W3C's WOFF 2.0 significantly improves compression efficiency and lowers
          network bandwidth in fast decompression of font data

WOFF 2.0 deployed in all major Web browsers, 70% of major websites now
use Web Fonts
     __________________________________________________________

   [2]Translations | [3]W3C Press Release Archive
     __________________________________________________________

      [2] 
https://www.w3.org/Press/Releases-2018#media-advisory-woff2-rec

      [3] 
https://www.w3.org/Press/


   [4]fonts illustration

      [4] 
https://www.w3.org/TR/WOFF2/


   [5]
https://www.w3.org/
 — 1 March 2018 — Web Open Font Format
   (WOFF) File Format 2.0, now a W3C Recommendation, significantly
   improves compression efficiency thus lowering use of network
   bandwidth, while allowing fast decompression of font data even
   on mobile devices.

      [5] 
https://www.w3.org/


   Web fonts are an important Web typography tool which allow Web
   designers to use fonts that are not installed on the viewer's
   computer. Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is a font packaging
   format designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement
   compression of font data with significantly better compression
   than previous techniques, suitable for use with CSS @font-face
   rules, that is [6]deployed in all the major browsers.

      [6] 
https://caniuse.com/#search=woff


  Built on the success of WOFF 1.0

   Published as a W3C Recommendation in 2012, WOFF 1.0 gave Web
   developers confidence to use WebFonts: browsers rapidly
   provided unequivocal, unified support for it, and the format
   received the backing of many of the main font foundries.

   Designing it as a minimum viable product was instrumental in
   its success. Flate compression was already used by PNG and
   HTTP, resulting in fewer additions to the browsers.

  Explosive growth of WebFonts usage

   When WOFF 1.0 was started in 2010, a mere 1% of the the top ten
   thousand websites used WebFonts. By the time WOFF 2.0 was
   started in 2014, WebFont usage was up to 35% while today, [7]it
   is up to 70%.

      [7] 
http://httparchive.org/trends.php?s=All&minlabel=Nov+15+2010&maxlabel=Feb+1+2018#perFonts


  Improved compression that makes a difference

   Custom font-specific preprocessing - based on MicroType Express
   by Monotype - removes redundancy and inefficiency from the
   TrueType or OpenType files. Then a newly-developed entropy
   coding scheme, Brotli, squeezes the font to the smallest size
   while not requiring excessive CPU or memory usage for decoding,
   even on lower-end mobile devices.

  Backed up by a strong open source library

   A good, open source, WOFF 2.0 encoder and decoder library was
   [8]developed by Google in parallel with the specification. This
   allowed rapid experimentation, large scale testing, and a
   proven codebase which is now used by font foundries worldwide.
   The decoding portion is used by all the major browsers.

      [8] 
https://github.com/google/woff2


   For more technical details on the specification as well as
   history, please read [9]WOFF 2.0, the inside scoop, by Chris
   Lilley, on the W3C Blog.

      [9] 
https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/03/woff-2-0-the-inside-scoop/


About the World Wide Web Consortium

   The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead
   the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards
   and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible,
   and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C develops
   well known specifications such as HTML5, CSS, and the Open Web
   Platform as well as work on security and privacy, all created
   in the open and provided for free and under the unique W3C
   Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more
   accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016
   Emmy Award.

   W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of
   dedicated technologists representing more than 400 [10]Member
   organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly
   hosted by the [11]MIT Computer Science and Artificial
   Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the
   [12]European Research Consortium for Informatics and
   Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, [13]Keio
   University in Japan and [14]Beihang University in China. For
   more information see [15]
https://www.w3.org/.


     [10] 
https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

     [11] 
https://www.csail.mit.edu/

     [12] 
https://www.ercim.eu/

     [13] 
https://www.keio.ac.jp/

     [14] 
http://ev.buaa.edu.cn/

     [15] 
https://www.w3.org/


   End Media Advisory

Media Contact

   Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator
   <[16]w3t-pr@w3.org>
  mailto:w3t-pr@w3.org

   +1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)
     __________________________________________________________

   [17]Translations | [18]W3C Press Release Archive

     [17] 
https://www.w3.org/Press/Releases-2018#media-advisory-woff2-rec

     [18] 
https://www.w3.org/Press/

Received on Thursday, 1 March 2018 13:32:59 UTC