- From: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>
- Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 15:50:08 +0200
- To: Christine Bloomquist <kaprqn4203@sbcglobal.net>
- Cc: (wrong string) åkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com>, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com>, "www-font@w3.org" <www-font@w3.org>
Christine Bloomquist wrote:
> My thought is that MOST USERS don't give a darn. But since I grew
> up (1960-70's) having to always consider transfer speed, how much
> tape 800,000 data records would require (14 reels) I have a great
> appreciation of your debate I can not even begin to relate my
> frustrations over having to order a CD rather than download an
> upgrade because of how long it would take on dialup. I recall one -
> from Microsoft - Windows 95 - that took over 10 hours!!
I understand your frustrations; it a timely reminder in this debate.
While most people on this list use broadband connections, there are
many web users who do not have this luxury -- at least not all the
time. Users of Opera Mini or Opera Mobile have limited bandwidth and
due to the natural limitations in the RF spectrum, bandwidth will
continue to be scarce resource. Even for desktop users, this is an
issue in many parts of the world, and this is why we launched Opera
Turbo mode.
Web fonts will help, rather than hinder, the situation for
bandwidth-constrained users. First, browsers can just ignore web fonts
altogether -- the content is still visible. Second, browsers can cache
web fonts and reuse glyphs -- this is not possible when text is
represented as images. Third, intelligent proxies may analyze content
and only transfer glyphs that are used. This doesn't work so well for
a read-write web, but a second stage of downloading can be offered if
users need to edit the content.
Cheers,
-h&kon
Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome
Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2009 13:51:08 UTC