When I first added a webfont to test double’s web site, I didn’t realize that only hosting a “.woff” file was not enough to ensure sharp rendering across browsers and operating systems. The font looked fine in Safari on OS X, a little aliased on Chrome on OS X, a jagged mess on Chrome in Windows, and almost invisible Internet Explorer.

As it turns out, browser filetype support is all over the place. Some browsers will (apparently, my knowledge of this is limited to my own frustrations) attempt to degrade gracefully when only a non-preferred filetype is provided. What’s really odd, however, is that even if you provide a browser’s preferred font filetype, it will sometimes render the font more accurately (with better kerning and anti-aliasing) if you also provide font files it doesn’t prefer. Who knows why that is. Browsers.

Anyway, here’s how I recommend going about hosting your own fonts on the web.

  1. Find OTF or TTF files for the various weights and styles of your font.
  2. Visit Font Squirrel’s webfont generator and upload each weight and style of your font that you’d like, selecting the Optimal option.
  3. Download your kit, then copy all the newly generated eog, .svg., .ttf, and .woff font files into any publicly available path of your web application
  4. Define your @font-face declarations (one per style & weight) to point at your new web font styles.

Here’s the CSS declaration I’m currently finding success with:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Source Sans Pro';
  src: url('../webfonts/sourcesanspro-regular-webfont.eot');
  src: url('../webfonts/sourcesanspro-regular-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
       url('../webfonts/sourcesanspro-regular-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
       url('../webfonts/sourcesanspro-regular-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
       url('../webfonts/sourcesanspro-regular-webfont.svg#source_sans_proregular') format('svg');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
}

In the above, my CSS is being served from /app/css/fonts.css and my webfonts are in /app/webfonts.

It’s also important to specify a font-weight and font-style in accordance with each font file. This step can be a little confusing, as each font creator seems to have their own nomenclature for font weights. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that the font-weight you assign matches whatever weight your CSS specifies.

Justin Searls

Person An icon of a human figure Status
Double Agent
Hash An icon of a hash sign Code Name
Agent 002
Location An icon of a map marker Location
Orlando, FL