WOFF support in different browsers

María Ramos

I am sure this have been mentioned before in other discussions, but I can't find the answer. Do all the browsers today support the WOFF format? 
I have found this info telling Opera Mini is the only browser that doesn't support those files http://caniuse.com/#search=woff

Thomas Phinney

Not your actual question, but... note that Opera Mini does not support any other type of web fonts, either. So it's not that there is some other format that one could use instead for Opera Mini.

María Ramos

Thanks @Thomas Phinney, so there is no need to embed any other format in a website. If woff is a standard now, why type foundries offer other formats for the web then?

Roel Nieskens

If you click the "Show all" button it'll show you older versions of browsers, and you'll see for instance that IE8 and older Android don't support WOFF. It'd be up to you to decide if you want to offer no custom fonts to those visitors, of offer EOT (for old IE) or TTF/OTF (for old Android).

Thomas Phinney

What Roel said.

Jason Campbell

FWIW, I still get requests for SVG occasionally. For no good reason, maybe they are reading old articles?
But What Roel said. 

James Puckett

Jason Campbell said:

FWIW, I still get requests for SVG occasionally. For no good reason, maybe they are reading old articles?
But What Roel said. 

I think this is a problem we’ll be dealing with for years. Some smart and respected people worked their butts off to figure out what worked on what platform and what was the perfect combination of formats and syntax. And they documented it. That old combination still works, so that old documentation is what users are going to see until stuff breaks and new documentation is written.

Stuart Sandler

@Jason Campbell I see your compatriots at House are now selling web fonts but in WOFF and WOFF2 formats only. Are we at that point in history where that is the only web font format we need to offer anymore in your opinion?

Johannes Neumeier

Internet explorer 8 and those older Android versions that don't support woff make a combined less than 1% of the market. Considering those systems, I'd say any users still using them will have other more glaring issues impacting their browsing experience than a font defaulting to a font stack backup. At this point I'd consider this like a user disabling javascript. The modern web almost exclusively works with it, and if they choose not to have it supported they are aware and/or comfortable with the consequences. Neither vendor company has official support for those outdates browsers.
I think it might be what @Jason Campbell said: The folks requesting those formats are not up to date with developments. It's a different question if, as font provider, you should be the one to educate them on that particular aspect of web technologies.

Yªssin Bªggªr

Some are not up to date, but for others, they just want as much brand consistency as they can get for their $. And since fonts can be relatively expensive, they'll ask for their EOTs and sometimes even SVGs or TTFs.
But things are changing fast. 6 months ago I wouldn't have thought of dropping EOT already. Now I don't think it will bug as many clients… probably sometime in 2017.

Jason Campbell

I see your compatriots at House are now selling web fonts but in WOFF and WOFF2 formats only. Are we at that point in history where that is the only web font format we need to offer anymore in your opinion?

That's what we are thinking. It may be a bit of a forward-looking idea, but I'd rather be forward-looking than make it seem like we support technologies that were given up on quite a while ago, like EOT. 

Personally I think that the Android issue is not so important, I'd think that there are more Windows users hanging onto old machines that might need EOT. And if I do get complaints from a customer, I would probably manually supply EOT rather than rock the boat.

Stuart Sandler

Are you concerned about legacy computers in developing international markets at all?

Jason Campbell

Are you concerned about legacy computers in developing international markets at all?

That's obviously one concern. It's something that we are keeping our eyes on. 

Roel Nieskens

Jason Campbell said:

Are you concerned about legacy computers in developing international markets at all?

That's obviously one concern. It's something that we are keeping our eyes on. 

Offering highly compressed fonts to capable browsers, and not serving legacy formats to old or low-powered devices is one of the best ways to keep users of legacy computers and low-budget devices in developing markets happy. Thanks for serving only WOFF and WOFF2

Thomas Phinney

Roel, are you saying that the people/places with old devices/browsers are the same people/places with really low bandwidth, where recipients would prefer to not see a web font at all because of the latency?

Roel Nieskens

Unfortunately we can never be sure. It's very well possible to have an old Android 2.2 phone connected to a hyperfast 54 Mbps wifi network, or the latest high-end Macbook to a super unstable GPRS network. Web developers have been dreaming of a media query or API that would just answer the simple question "are we on a slow or fast connection?"

So we have to make assumptions. Serving heavily optimised fonts to modern browsers who can handle them, and no fonts to obsolete browsers, is a very good start.

Dealing with FOUT and FOIT by having a good @font-face loading strategy is a much larger problem to be solved and not many web developers are doing that. They still believe including legacy formats in the old "bulletproof @font-face syntax" (published in 2009, when webfonts were still in their infancy!) is enough for an accessible, usable site. I think that's where the request of EOT, OTF/TTF and SVG versions comes from — because of outdated info, not because of a thorough research of the target audience and their needs.