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Web Development Intermediate

What is Web Font Optimization?

Techniques for loading custom fonts efficiently to minimize their impact on page load performance and visual stability.

Web fonts significantly impact performance — a typical font file is 20-100KB, and pages often load multiple weights/styles. Optimization techniques include: subsetting fonts (removing unused characters), using modern formats (WOFF2 offers 30% better compression than WOFF), preloading critical fonts (link rel=preload), font-display: swap (showing fallback text immediately, swapping when font loads), self-hosting instead of Google Fonts (reducing DNS lookups and privacy concerns), limiting font variations (fewer weights/styles), and using system font stacks as fallbacks. Variable fonts can replace multiple static font files with a single file containing all weight/width variations.

Related Terms

Caching
Storing copies of frequently accessed data in faster storage to reduce load times and server processing.
Web Caching Strategies
Techniques for storing copies of web resources at various levels to reduce server load, bandwidth, and response times.
AJAX
A technique for making asynchronous HTTP requests from a web page without reloading the entire page.
Progressive Web App (PWA)
A web application that uses modern web capabilities to deliver app-like experiences with offline support and push notifications.
HTTP/2
The second major version of HTTP that improves performance through multiplexing, header compression, and server push.
DOM (Document Object Model)
A programming interface for HTML documents that represents the page structure as a tree of objects that can be manipulated with JavaScript.
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