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> There is zero reason that fonts need to be served third party. I use the service Icomoon[0] in production. It's been immensely helpful for generating a custo

> There is zero reason that fonts need to be served third party. I use the service Icomoon[0] in production. It's been immensely helpful for generating a custom icon font. Our designers upload icons they create, and Icomoon bundles them all in one font file. Easier than multiple SVGs and only one HTTP request. I wouldn't want to manage that myself — so there's one reason for fonts to be served third party. [0] https://icomoon.io https://icomoon.io

joobus 8y ago
I personally don't like sites that bundle icons into fonts. I got sick of reading a different font on every website, some being very hard to read, so I override the font on every website with stylus. All the icons, which should be images, become square boxes.
3pt14159 8y ago
Right but you shouldn't need to. In my proposed solution the browser could just make a separate, non-third party request for the font to icomoon.io and on load, if browser needs that font and doesn't already have it. It should get it from your OS provisioner (Google / Mozilla / Apple / Microsoft) directly and if they don't have it (or Icomoons public key) they could request it from Icomoon on your behalf. Or, if Icomoon is up to shady tactics, refuse the request.
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  You said there's zero reason for fonts to be served by a third party. And then you're saying that part of your proposed solution is for the user (party 1) to download the font not from your site (party 2) but from Icomoon (party 3, i.e. literally a third party). Did I miss something?
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    The point is that copying or hosting the font shouldn't be what is copyrightable. It should be use. Most commonly used fonts should be pre-installed. Only for the very weird situations should the browser resort to downloading the font and, in my opinion, should do it in a way that is not trackable. The way we currently download third-party fonts exposes the content that we're viewing to the font hoster. That's really stupid. If we need to download from a third party it shouldn't be in the same browser context. I.e., the party shouldn't be able to execute arbitrary JS or see the document Origin.

joobus 8y ago

I personally don't like sites that bundle icons into fonts. I got sick of reading a different font on every website, some being very hard to read, so I override the font on every website with stylus. All the icons, which should be images, become square boxes.

3pt14159 8y ago

Right but you shouldn't need to. In my proposed solution the browser could just make a separate, non-third party request for the font to icomoon.io and on load, if browser needs that font and doesn't already have it. It should get it from your OS provisioner (Google / Mozilla / Apple / Microsoft) directly and if they don't have it (or Icomoons public key) they could request it from Icomoon on your behalf. Or, if Icomoon is up to shady tactics, refuse the request.

rahimnathwani 8y ago
You said there's zero reason for fonts to be served by a third party. And then you're saying that part of your proposed solution is for the user (party 1) to download the font not from your site (party 2) but from Icomoon (party 3, i.e. literally a third party). Did I miss something?
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  The point is that copying or hosting the font shouldn't be what is copyrightable. It should be use. Most commonly used fonts should be pre-installed. Only for the very weird situations should the browser resort to downloading the font and, in my opinion, should do it in a way that is not trackable. The way we currently download third-party fonts exposes the content that we're viewing to the font hoster. That's really stupid. If we need to download from a third party it shouldn't be in the same browser context. I.e., the party shouldn't be able to execute arbitrary JS or see the document Origin.