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Feb 27, 2011

Web Fonts: No MIME Types, No Problem

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In a previous post, Correct MIME Type for CSS Web Fonts, I discussed the lack of official, standards-based MIME types for various web fonts.

In the 18 months since then, the state of MIME types for web fonts largely remains the same:

Because there are no defined MIME types for TrueType, OpenType, and WOFF fonts, the MIME type of the file specified is not considered.
— @font-face, Mozilla Developer Network

Web Browser Logos

However, since then web font support in most major browsers has continued to improve. The lack of official MIME types for web fonts is not a major concern, and it has not slowed further adoption of web fonts in most major web browsers. One emerging font format is WOFF.

WOFF

In late 2009, Mozilla debuted the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) specification and soon shipped a working implementation in the first WOFF-capable web browser, Firefox 3.6. The Mozilla Foundation was then joined by Microsoft Corporation and Opera Software ASA in April 2010 as they submitted a specification for the WOFF file format to the newly chartered W3C WebFonts Working Group.

Microsoft debuted support for WOFF in Internet Explorer 9 platform preview 3. Opera added support for WOFF in Opera 11.10. Google Chrome 5.0 added support for WOFF. Curiously still absent among the major web browsers supporting WOFF today is Apple Safari.

 

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Category: software

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  • Ulrik

    "@font not ready at window.load"

    The get same message appears in my chrome browser when accessing a local web page.

    "Resource interpreted as font but transferred with MIME type application/octet-stream."

    However it does not seem to cause any problems. The font is applied as it should be. But i almost gave up trying to display the font using canvas text. But then i discovered that it appeared sporadically when refreshing the page. When adding a setTimeout at 500ms the text displays. But it tells me that there is a window.onload problem. The @font is not ready at window.load

  • http://mroncetwice.com/ jon mills

    so did you find a solution then, Ulrik? i've appended my .htaccess accordingly and the font i'm using is showing up visually, but i still get that same “Resource interpreted as font but transferred with MIME type application/octet-stream." warning in my resources.

    anyone else seeing this issue occur?

  • http://www.trisis.co.uk/ Simon Kenyon Shepard

    Just to update, I was scanning for the answer for this, there are a few stack overflow posts:
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3594823/mime-t…

    apparently there is no yet agreed standard for mime types for woff fonts, but chrome supports:

    "application/x-font-woff"

  • http://3dwebtech.gr/ κατασκευη ιστοσελιδας

    nice post thanks

  • LocalPCGuy

    Just an FYI – not including the MIME type on an IIS server could end up in the IIS server not serving the font file at all since it doesn’t know how to transfer it.

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