Re: Webfont compression

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 4:02 AM, John Daggett<jdaggett@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Richard Fink wrote:
>
>> The New EOT format is basically simple and it will bring web fonts to
>> more users faster than any other approach. This being what I meant by
>> the main positive of the New EOT.
>
> I don't think any new web font format should be saddled with legacy
> issues from the EOT format and Microsoft's implementation of it.  We
> should be striving for a simple way that all browsers can support
> @font-face interoperably, not a way to make web fonts work in IE6.

We've been over this before, JD.  We know that the IE upgrade and
uptake cycles are longer than for any other browser, thus any solution
that means IE has to support something new is automatically
handicapped by a 5+ year wait for it to be useful to us.  (I can
convince the Advertising department to accept IE users not getting
pretty rounded corners - I have not so far been able to convince them
to accept IE users not getting the pretty font they want in our
headers.)  It so happens that EOT Lite was stumbled upon as a format
that is supported by all currently relevant versions of IE, and is
fairly uncontroversial.

The fact that we can make web fonts work in IE6 without any of the
more distasteful baggage of the EOT format is a glorious coincidence
that we would be remiss in not taking advantage of, for the sake of us
authors who just want to use pretty fonts yesterday.

After that gets standardized, go crazy making a simpler format.  The
basic work will have been completed, and the urgent need to do
something, *anything*, will no longer be present.  You can spend time
gathering opinions and debating technical points then.

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 13:13:23 UTC