Re: CSS3 Web Fonts issue with ‘block on download’

Hi All,

On May 8, 2009, at 3:59 AM, David Hyatt wrote:

> An even better solution is obviously "never look bad"

This sounds great to me :) As does the idea of using a local font for  
rendering after a few seconds. That would resolve the ‘no  
visible content for an undetermined time’ problem.

So I guess this is a case where the working draft is fine and the  
implementation just needs a little improvement huh.

For content creators, it seems these things will help:
* compress fonts eg via mod_deflate
* subset fonts if possible (I’m guessing there’ll  
eventually be usable tools to do this, including CMS plugins/server  
side solutions―the current situation is pretty bleak though)
* use a font stack containing local fonts with similar metrics
* check if the layout differs greatly when using a web font vs the  
first local font in the font stack

Is there anything else I can do to minimise this problem? If I include  
other CSS3 Web Fonts properties (2.6 Descriptors for Matching, 2.7  
Descriptors for Synthesis), are UAs planning to eventually use this  
data to create on-the-fly substitute fonts, or will fouc issues mean  
synthesised/matched fonts are only used as a last resort (rather than  
as an intermediary stage)?

Thank you all for the education―I learned a lot.

peace - oli

Received on Friday, 8 May 2009 05:31:58 UTC