I want to add Quicksand Font to my website so google prompted me to add the following -
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=**Quicksand:wght#500**&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
My question is - what is the advantage we are going to get with first line of code i.e. preconnecting to fonts.googleapis.com
I mean I get the point of preconnecting to fonts.gstatic.com as the fonts files are residing in that domain
Modern browsers try their best to anticipate what connections a page will need, but they cannot reliably predict them all. The good news is that you can give them a (resource 😉) hint.
Adding rel=preconnect to a informs the browser that your page intends to establish a connection to another domain, and that you'd like the process to start as soon as possible. Resources will load more quickly because the setup process has already been completed by the time the browser requests them.
https://web.dev/i18n/en/preconnect-and-dns-prefetch/
All major browsers (Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge) displays a blank space in place of the text that uses the font until the font has loaded.
Mozilla Firefox alone displays the text in the default font, and then re-renders text in the font once it has loaded.
So to have better user experience, the Link Type rel="preconnect" is used so that when the link is followed the linked content can be fetched more quickly.
MDN Documentation:
Link types: preconnect
The preconnect keyword for the rel attribute of
the element is a hint to browsers that the user is likely to
need resources from the target resource's origin, and therefore the
browser can likely improve the user experience by preemptively
initiating a connection to that origin.
Browser specific behaviors of different browsers with web fonts is as follows
Google Chrome
Chrome renders the rest of the page, but until the
font has loaded, it displays a blank space in place of the text that
uses the font.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox first displays the text in the default font,
and then re-renders text in the font once it has loaded. This behavior
is known as a "flash of unstyled text."
Apple Safari
Safari renders the rest of the page, but until the font
has loaded, it displays a blank space in place of the text that uses
the font.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer renders the rest of
the page, but until the font has loaded, it displays a blank space in
place of the text that uses the font.
Related
I am working on a new web project and currently I am using the favicon files. Some time ago this was an easy task but nowadays almost the complete HTML header seems to be occupied by this topic:
Default favicon
iOS favicon
Microsoft favicon and tiles
Android favicon
Safari tabs icons
Chrome icons
...
All these elements are referenced using the standard <link /> tag. I now wonder when these elements are loaded:
Are all <link /> elements loaded by default or are the different browsers smart enough to only load such elements that are really used on the current platform/system? So is the Windows Tile Icon loaded on iOS as well?
The same is true for other elements that are referenced as <link />? Assume that there are 100 different style sheets linked in the header. Theoretically the browser could load these files in reverse order (later styles override earlier once). If all styles that are used in the current file are already defined in the last style sheet there is not need to load the other 99 files, is it?
Most likely in real life it is much harder to determine if a style sheet handles all possible stlyes than downloading and parsing/combining all 100 files.
However the question is the same: It seems that there are many cases when it is not necessary to download all <link /> elements. Are browsers smart enough to detect and use these cases?
Nowadays, you should declare at least 3 or 4 icons to support all browsers, and up to 20+ icons if you want to implement the full range of available icons. There are known issues regarding loading:
Firefox loads all PNG icons on the critical path (the link rel="icon" icons; not the Apple touch icons). The root cause is that FF does not support the sizes attribute. If you feel concerned by this, please vote for this bug.
Chrome loads more than one PNG icon, which is better than what it used to be, but still not perfect. Same root cause: Chromes does not support the sizes attribute. But apparently the Chromium team feels concerned about this.
iOS Safari often loads two different Touch icons. This is something I observed several times in server logs while testing icons with an iPad, but I don't have any solid material to provide here. Also note that iOS Safari regularly loads Touch icons in the root path by convention (for example, /apple-touch-icon-120x120-precomposed.png). So declaring less Touch icons, or even only one Touch icon, may not be a definitive solution: Safari may try to load some icons nonetheless and get 404s.
I have no data for Android Chrome or IE.
Assuming the response from:
How to prevent favicon.ico requests?
in Chrome and Android an IFRAME will generate 3 requests for favicons:
"GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 183 "GET
/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png HTTP/1.1" 404 197 "GET
/apple-touch-icon.png HTTP/1.1" 404 189
And from: Will browsers request /favicon.ico or <link> first?
I guess that the browsers requests all the favicons in the <link> first, if no specified, then search for 'favicon' in the root of the folder.
FYI: You can take a look at: https://github.com/audreyr/favicon-cheat-sheet too to get more info! Hope it helps!
So on google chrome and its only on google chrome I can't seem to get my favicon for a specific page to work
I have a default favicon in the root directory call favicon.ico but I have another one called Lokor_favicon.ico the code im using for the specific page is as follows
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/Lokor_favicon.ico?v=2" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="icon" href="/Lokor_favicon.ico?v=2" type="image/x-icon">
on fire fox it can load the two different favicons based off what page I am on but on chrome it simply refuses to follow the code and goes with the default favicon anyways
any thoughts?
Chrome isn't trying to be difficult, there's just no defined way to handle multiple favicons, and each browser implements their own approach. The wikipedia article explains this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon#How_to_use
Here's the pertinent info:
If links for both PNG and ICO favicons are present, PNG-favicon-compatible browsers select which format and size to use as follows. Firefox and Safari will use the favicon that comes last. Chrome for Mac will use whichever favicon is ICO formatted, otherwise the 32×32 favicon. Chrome for Windows will use the favicon that comes first if it is 16×16, otherwise the ICO. If none of the aforementioned options are available, both Chromes will use whichever favicon comes first, exactly the opposite of Firefox and Safari. Indeed, Chrome for Mac will ignore the 16×16 favicon and use the 32×32 version if only to scale it back down to 16×16 on non-retina devices. Opera will choose from any of the available icons completely at random.
It's best to only offer one favicon. If you have a larger PNG version that you specify in your meta tags, then skip using the favicon.ico file altogether. All browsers will support that.
If you feel you need multiple icons for different parts of your site, then you're trying to use them in a way they were never intended, and you'll have mixed results. If you remove the favicon.ico file altogether, and instead let each page specify its own icon, then people will end up seeing the icon for the first page they visit. So if they get to your "about us" page from Google, they're going to see whatever icon the "about us" page specifies, for the duration of their visit and as long as their browser stores it in cache.
I am using two Google Web Fonts at my website. They are Roboto Slab and Fauna One. They look good in latest Mozilla Firefox and IE10 but for some reason they look horrible in Google Chrome.
They are linked to my website as follows:
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto+Slab:400,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Fauna+One' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
It took me a while to realize that Google Chrome has a problem with web fonts and that it renders them poorly. I am wondering if there is solution for this?
What if I download those two font types and embed them into the main directory of my website and then call them through CSS via #font-face property? Would Google Chrome in that case render those fonts nicely or I would still have the same problem and poorly rendered fonts???
Or there is some other solution for this issue?
Thank you all!
I believe I saw some bug report for Chrome where it was mentioned that this will be fixed - but I'm not 100% sure. I believe that it's not actually 100% the fault of Chrome...
My understanding is that the problem is to do with the order in which font types are presented in the #font-face directive. So, Chrome handles more than one type but not all types will render at equal quality. Apparently, Google actually doesn't serve the fonts in the right order from fonts.google.com - somehow...
In the end I found that, with Roboto at least (which I'm also using on a project), it is available for use on Font Squirrel (and open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license) - so you can download it here: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/roboto (download the Webfont Kit for full cross-browser font support) - you lose the CDN goodness of having it hosted on Google's servers if you use it from your own web server but, IMHO, I'd rather lose a few milliseconds than have to deal with such terribly rendered text...
I can't help you with Fauna One, unfortunately - it doesn't appear to be listed on Font Squirrel - perhaps you can find it on another font site? Or another similar font which is available on font squirrel?
From a web browser perspective (Chrome being the browser in question), Chrome 35 in Windows has difficulty rendering some fonts, like Roboto, without some horrible artifacts that make the font difficult to read.
There is a feature called DirectWrite that will be included by default in future versions of Chrome that will fix this problem. You can enable it now in Chrome 35 by going to chrome://flags in your browser URL bar. You can Enable DirectWrite (experimental in Chrome 35), close your browser, open and try again.
Just to be clear, I discovered this problem on Chrome 35 for Windows. DirectWrite is a DirectX API for rendering fonts in Windows. Chrome by default uses Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) which seems to be the problem.
See this article
I have a website. It uses 2 Google webfonts for its headings and body text. These work fine on Chrome/IE/Safari (including mobile) but when I view the site on my office computer running IE9 on Win7 the Google fonts do not load and fall back to a sans-serif.
Here is what I see:
IE9:
Chrome:
I cannot figure out why IE fails to load the font as I am aware that Google font's are compatible with IE7+. I figure it might be a security setting but can't get to the bottom of it. Any ideas.
I don't know if this is the issue, but try changing your request to only one link tag:
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oswald|Lato' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
Perhaps loading two fonts in two different requests causes issues.
On my IE9 it looked the same as in Chrome. Press F12 and make sure you are using proper Browser and Document Mode.
Every time I refresh the page I have to wait for a bunch of requests to return before I actually see the fonts appear. The fonts are cached and all these requests return a "Not Modified" header. Is it proper browser behavior to not display the font until it is made certain that the font hasn't been modified? Am I missing something?
I understand that I can use a generic fallback font until the proper fonts are loaded, but this will break my page.
I'm seeing this behavior in Chrome and Firefox, both on Ubuntu. My internet is really patchy, so sometimes I have to stare at a fully loaded page with invisible text, it's really frustrating.
You should always use a fall-back font, and design your page such that it will not break the page. Sometimes the Google font service may be unavailable; other times, your users could be behind firewalls that prevent downloading the fonts. And, as you've seen, your fonts won't display immediately until the browser is satisfied that the fonts have been downloaded properly.