Re: CSS3 Web Fonts issue with ¡®block on download¡¯

I was thinking of something more along the lines of a limited version  
of synthetic fonts, so that a person could read the text, and continue  
reading uninterupted when the font finally loaded and repainted the  
characters.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 7, 2009, at 10:50 AM, David Hyatt <hyatt@apple.com> wrote:

> On May 7, 2009, at 12:18 PM, Brad Kemper wrote:
>
>>
>> On May 7, 2009, at 9:08 AM, David Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>> You don't want to see an unsightly visual flicker every time you  
>>> use an uncached downloadable font.  I think the behavior of just  
>>> showing nothing until the font is loaded is much better.  WebKit  
>>> should probably eventually display the wrong font after a certain  
>>> timeout period, but displaying the wrong font immediately is as  
>>> bad as FOUC.
>>
>> I also agree, especially if it was a relatively short timeout (a  
>> second or two). The effect on page load speed, especially on an  
>> HTTPS server, is one of my primary concerns.
>>
>> Is there any way to just grab kerning, tracking, and width info  
>> first, so that the page can be drawn with the right geometries  
>> prior to getting all the glyph path information? If that would be  
>> faster, maybe it could be an additional standard for loading that  
>> separately if available (as in, from a separate file). Then it  
>> wouldn't look as FOUC-like, because it wouldn't force a reflow.
>
> WebKit does use the the following fonts in the fallback list for  
> measurement information.  It just doesn't paint the glyphs.
>
> dave
>

Received on Thursday, 7 May 2009 18:25:32 UTC