Starting in
Link Removed, Microsoft Edge supports
Link Removed — a new format that reduces the size of a font file by more than 30%, helping web pages load faster. This feature is available to preview via the
Link Removed starting with build 14316, and is coming to stable builds with the
Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
Over 60% of web pages use custom fonts, which make up
5.3% of the size of the average web page today. Modern sites are loading ever more data in the form of fonts, as the demand for custom fonts grows, and as site payloads in general trend upwards. Because of this trend, loading font files faster when rendering a page makes a huge difference in perceived performance; WOFF 2 provides a substantial improvement here.
WOFF 2 compresses fonts with
Brotli to deliver more than 30% reduction in font file size over the earlier 2009-era W3C
WOFF standard, which used zlib/compress2. WOFF 2 also uses font-specific compression based on the MicroType Express format that first used in web fonts in the
EOT font format.
Using custom fonts is now easier than ever – WOFF 2 is widely interoperable, with support in
Link Removed, in Firefox and Chrome, and
coming soon in Safari. If you are using
Google Fonts on your site, your work is already done – Microsoft Edge is already using WOFF 2 fonts from this service, with more services coming soon.
As always, we look forward to your feedback and comments!
–
Link Removed, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Edge
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