4 ms·

Kilimanjaro called it yesterday :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357578

Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Thanks google, love ya guys ;-) Now, what would be the benefit of calling: http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Inconsolata which in turn serves the css that contains the real call to the font: @font-face { font-family: 'Inconsolata'; src: url('http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eud0dz8jw') format('truetype'); } So, why two trips, instead of just one? What I'd do is just call the font directly and teach developers to use @font-face And shrink the url a bit: http://fonts.googleapis.com/Inconsolata Remember, once it gets widespread use it would be harder to change a single char
- qjz 16y ago
  I wish they'd serve everything from subdomains in google.com. I mean, seriously, why does Google keep registering new domains for projects (google<something>.com) when they could easily use <something>.google.com instead? What's wrong with fonts.google.com?
  - Hovertruck 16y ago
    My guess is they don't want to send all the cookies stored on the google.com domain whenever someone loads a font.
    - ggrot 16y ago
      Seems reasonable. It protects users too because they can't track the cookies across these domains even if they wanted to.
    - revicon 16y ago
      Yahoo does this as well for the same cookie reason. Lots of stuff is hosted on yahoo.net that's considered potentially unsafe.
- pyre 16y ago
  I believe that it's handling the browser differences server-side.
  - zweben 16y ago
    Is there any specific benefit to doing this? Does it decrease the number of files loaded?
    - treyp 16y ago
      it decreases the size of the CSS file slightly since you don't have to repeat every browser's version
- celoyd 16y ago
  It says “The API will generate the necessary CSS specific to the user's browser so you can use the font on your page.” If you change your user-agent, you’ll see it change.
  - mikeryan 16y ago
    I'm looking at a few other similar services which also include legal text in the CSS file, I wonder if this might be another reason.
- sosuke 16y ago
  It is important to note as well that http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eud0dz8jw http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eu... doesn't return just the font but the font that works with the browser that requested it. In IE it gives the EOT font in Chrome it gives the TTF
  - silvestrov 16y ago
    Another very important advantage is that the browser can cache the stylesheet and the font, and can reuse them across multiple websites. So if your website uses a font that is used by another website which the user has already visited, the browser doesn't need to download the font again. It doesn't even need to check the modification date on Googles server. As many fonts add ~100 KB to the download size for a page, this really makes a difference.

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Thanks google, love ya guys ;-) Now, what would be the benefit of calling: http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Inconsolata which in turn serves the css that contains the real call to the font: @font-face { font-family: 'Inconsolata'; src: url('http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eud0dz8jw') format('truetype'); } So, why two trips, instead of just one? What I'd do is just call the font directly and teach developers to use @font-face And shrink the url a bit: http://fonts.googleapis.com/Inconsolata Remember, once it gets widespread use it would be harder to change a single char

qjz 16y ago
I wish they'd serve everything from subdomains in google.com. I mean, seriously, why does Google keep registering new domains for projects (google<something>.com) when they could easily use <something>.google.com instead? What's wrong with fonts.google.com?
- Hovertruck 16y ago
  My guess is they don't want to send all the cookies stored on the google.com domain whenever someone loads a font.
  - ggrot 16y ago
    Seems reasonable. It protects users too because they can't track the cookies across these domains even if they wanted to.
  - revicon 16y ago
    Yahoo does this as well for the same cookie reason. Lots of stuff is hosted on yahoo.net that's considered potentially unsafe.
pyre 16y ago
I believe that it's handling the browser differences server-side.
- zweben 16y ago
  Is there any specific benefit to doing this? Does it decrease the number of files loaded?
  - treyp 16y ago
    it decreases the size of the CSS file slightly since you don't have to repeat every browser's version
celoyd 16y ago
It says “The API will generate the necessary CSS specific to the user's browser so you can use the font on your page.” If you change your user-agent, you’ll see it change.
- mikeryan 16y ago
  I'm looking at a few other similar services which also include legal text in the CSS file, I wonder if this might be another reason.
sosuke 16y ago
It is important to note as well that http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eud0dz8jw http://themes.googleusercontent.com/font?kit=J_eeEGgHN8Gk3Eu... doesn't return just the font but the font that works with the browser that requested it. In IE it gives the EOT font in Chrome it gives the TTF
- silvestrov 16y ago
  Another very important advantage is that the browser can cache the stylesheet and the font, and can reuse them across multiple websites. So if your website uses a font that is used by another website which the user has already visited, the browser doesn't need to download the font again. It doesn't even need to check the modification date on Googles server. As many fonts add ~100 KB to the download size for a page, this really makes a difference.