The theory is that you get to skip what would otherwise be sequential http connections of: 1. Download the CSS 2. Parse CSS for font URLs 3. Download Fonts W

The theory is that you get to skip what would otherwise be sequential http connections of: 1. Download the CSS 2. Parse CSS for font URLs 3. Download Fonts Which depending on a bunch of factors (caching, network latency, bandwidth, etc.) may or may not be faster overall and also may differ per client. The article also clued me into something I hadn't realized: apparently FF only downloads the font from an @font-face declaration when it determines it will actually be used. This is a very smart bandwidth optimization but probably also makes the delay worse.