Webfont service improvements

We constantly monitor the performance of our webfont service and work on ways make it faster and more efficient. Today we are announcing technical changes that you can take advantage of to get significantly improved webfont serving.

Longer cache for fonts and CSS files

We have extended cache durations: font files now remain in cache for one week, and CSS files are cached for 5 minutes. Practically speaking, this means that font data is loaded significantly faster, while changes in CSS can be still visible in 5 minutes. Returning visitors and visitors who visit multiple pages will experience faster loading times, as the fonts don’t need to be requested from the server, but are loaded from browser’s cache. This should also reduce webfont data transfer, effectively making the service cheaper.

HTTP and HTTPS

When saving a webfont project, users can choose between the standard font serving method and SSL security for HTTPS sites. We recommend using HTTP by default, since loading HTTPS is a little slower. Because of the SSL certificates, our HTTPS webfonts are available from a different domain.

No TTF files

All modern browsers now use WOFF fonts, so we are retiring our raw TrueType files, serving WOFF font files instead whenever possible. We’ve also retired SVG fonts, but continue to serve EOT files for older versions of Internet Explorer.

What to do

To take advantage of these improvements you will need to save the webfont project again. This will generate a new CSS, so you will need to use it to update your website.

The old method of serving the fonts is using this URL for serving the webfonts:

http://wf.typotheque.com/WF-XXXXXX-XXXXXX.css"

In the new method the URL is different:

http://fonts.typotheque.com/WF-XXXXXX-XXXXXX.css"

We are presently maintaining the old method of service, so you can make the change anytime, but we recommend that you try out the update. You will be pleasantly surprised.