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15 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
15 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
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A web font is any [font](/glossary/font) used in a website’s design that isn’t installed by default on the end user’s device—a counterpart to a [system font](/glossary/system_font_web_safe_font).
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</figure>
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The widespread adoption of web fonts happened around 2009–2011 thanks to mainstream browsers’ increased support for two things: `@font-face` declarations in CSS and the WOFF file format.
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WOFF (and its successor WOFF2) are compressed [file formats](/glossary/font_format) created specifically for web fonts. Although regular [OpenType](/glossary/open_type) fonts (TTF and OTF files) can be used as web fonts, such usage is not recommended as it usually contravenes [license](/glossary/licensing) agreements—and the files are significantly larger. WOFF and WOFF2 fonts cannot usually be installed on desktop computers.
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Note that web fonts are assets that need downloading, and therefore affect the overall performance of page load times; i.e., the more web fonts we use, the longer it’ll take for our websites to load. This is potentially offset with the use of [variable fonts](/glossary/variable_fonts).
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