Downloader: Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera team up on Web font standard

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera team up on Web font standard

Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera walk into a bar...After a lengthy discussion, they put together standards proposal for WOFF -- the Web Open Font Format. OK, so I doubt they really did this in a bar back on April 8th, but the three companies did, in fact, submit WOFF to the W3C. Type foundries LettError and Type Supply were also involved in the drafting of the spec.

The goal is to create a single method for delivering remote fonts on the Web. Here's how it will work:

This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of the font data, suitable for use in conjunction with the CSS declaration. Any TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format file can be losslessly converted to WOFF for Web use (subject to licensing of the font data); once decoded by a user agent, the WOFF font will display identically to the original desktop font from which it was created.

WOFF will also allow fontographers (fontsmithers?) to embed metadata such as licensing and version information -- though the submission states quality will be unaffected.

Interoperability? Cooperation? Standards?

This is a very different Web from the one which existed during the early days of IE6. Microsoft's participation in developments like WOFF is a good thing, and certainly another sign of their commitment to making IE9 a more responsible, compliant browser.

[via MSDN]

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