3 ms·
Fonts are a really bad example for the (otherwise valid) "fuck IE" mindset -- Internet Explorer was the first to support downloadable fonts, by a margin of at l
by blasdel 17y ago
Fonts are a really bad example for the (otherwise valid) "fuck IE" mindset -- Internet Explorer was the first to support downloadable fonts, by a margin of at least 5 years!
The only problem is that you have to convert the font into an arbitrarily different format, ans Adobe and the foundries would have screamed bloody murder (as they are doing now with @font-face) if you could just use plain TrueType and OpenType fonts.
Webkit has supported @font-face for quite a while, Mozilla is the real straggler here -- they repeatedly refused to implement it for a decade, and when they finally did they added a bullshit same-origin policy. At least they didn't introduce a second stupid webfont format!
- 9oliYQjP 17y agoEmbarrassingly enough, I didn't know that IE supported downloadable fonts. Thanks for the clarification.
- pbhj 17y agoYeah but MSIE decided to go with EOT which is arguably why no-one else bothered. If they'd used TTF then other browsers would have implemented it earlier because it would actually be a usable solution.
- derefr 17y agoI don't think the format was ever really the problem; people are willing to put up with all sorts of conversion shite to get things up on the web (FLV, for example.) IE's problem was entirely that it was ahead-of-its-time in this regard: fonts were too big on yesterday's internet to download at a decent clip for instant display, and there weren't any open fonts that anyone was interested in using.