From the course: Developing for Web Performance
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Web fonts can be major performance hogs
From the course: Developing for Web Performance
Web fonts can be major performance hogs
- [Instructor] Web fonts have provided a significant contribution to the aesthetic functionality and communication success of the web. The modern web would not be where it is today without the ability to display text using custom fonts. However, web fonts are also a major performance hog for several reasons. First, web fonts require their own style sheets or style declarations to work, which adds to the CSS weight. Second, web fonts require their own font files, one file for each individual font weight or style. If you use several styles of font, think weights, italics, et cetera, you need several font files, and all of these files often live on external services, like Google Fonts. While web fonts make our texts more visually appealing, they also cause some significant user experience problems with weird names, like FOUT or flash of unstyled text, or FOIT, flash of invisible text. If you choose to use custom web fonts…