Hi Kathy, It depends on your approach. Web designers tend to use web fonts for their preferred fonts, and use of web fonts are becoming more prevalent. With load times of fonts you will find different browsers have different strategies, some load a local font then refresh when web font has loaded, some will wait for the web font to download.
It is possible to gain more control over what is happening by using javascript libraries, like Web Font Loader: https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/webfont_loader I tend to work with multilingual sites, and instead of using web fonts are preferred fonts, I use web fonts as last resort fonts, i.e. web font is used if common fonts for the language are unavailable, ie web font is at tail end of the font stack. Andrew On 13 March 2014 10:06, Kathy Wheeler <kat...@home.albury.net.au> wrote: > > On 03/13/2014, at 6:30 AM, Chris Rockwell wrote: > > >> 1. In this sort of situation, is the webfont unconditionally downloaded, > >> or is it ignored unless/until actually needed? > >> > > I think it is ignored. According to the spec, the fonts can be > > automatically fetched and downloaded _when_needed_. > > This may not be doable in CSS but is there any configurable or settable > timeout? I've noticed significant delays in sites loading recently when > they've been downloading things piecemeal from all over including even > Google fonts. The sites connect quick enough, then sit there waiting to > connect or download other page components. It's gotten so bad after a few > minutes of nothing displaying I've had to abandon sites and look elsewhere. > > With the trend in moving things to "clouds" and distributed components > including fonts, jQuery etc, and increasing issues with routing, > connectivity and response time across these distributed resources, is there > a way to say for example if this font doesn't load from Google Fonts in so > many ms load the locally saved version? > > If this is not something CSS can address, any suggestions on where else to > ask? Or just stick to saving fonts and calling them off the website server > if necessary? > > KathyW. > ______________________________________________________________________ > css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] > http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d > List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ > List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html > Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ > -- Andrew Cunningham Project Manager, Research and Development (Social and Digital Inclusion) Public Libraries and Community Engagement State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Ph: +61-3-8664-7430 Mobile: 0459 806 589 Email: acunning...@slv.vic.gov.au lang.supp...@gmail.com http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
