Google Web Font API interview

For many Web designers and developers who are obsessed with fonts, yesterday's news about the Google Font API really made them happy, and this very simple and useful API includes a font library and a preview tool, combined with Google and Typekit Open source Webfon T-load tool, WEB designers make it easy to refer to personality fonts in their own sites.

The Google Web font API is very simple to use, just link a CSS file from Google and reference the font name in your own CSS definition, here's a demo to refer to. In fact, the Google Web font API is @font-face, you can do it yourself, but Google's approach has many advantages:

Bandwidth (bandwidth is assumed by Google)

Caching (the same font will have already been cached in many sites, and the browser can get it directly from the cache)

Speed (Google CDN accelerates the web faster than most people's sites)

Of course, loading Google's CSS files is an extra burden, but you can directly link the font file itself and even download the fonts to the site to make your own SVG version. In addition, Google Web fonts API does not support the IPhone and IPad.

About the Webfont loader, it's a JavaScript script that loads fonts that you can use without, but with the added benefit of using the words. For example, Firefox when loading Google Web fonts, in the @font-face load complete, will first display a surrogate font, and so on @font-face full load, the real font will replace the alternative font, which will cause the page flashing, and confusing, The Webfont loader can solve this problem.

Raph Levien is a font designer and has designed inconsolata fonts. Raph is also a member of the Google Web font API team, and this is an interview with Raph.

Chris:

Google has done a lot of good things for Web designers, including something that takes up a lot of their bandwidth, like using their CDN network to host JavaScript libraries, allowing me to be mean, what's the benefit of Google? Of course, this makes web fonts faster, but what good is a faster web for Google? Is it to analyze the data that is useful to Google?

Raph:

But to make the Web faster and richer. We do not collect any personal information, and our log records are just for statistical performance and to count which fonts are popular. The best thing about this service is that, as we host Ajax libraries, because many sites are using these services, it's easy for browsers to find things that have been loaded from the cache without reloading them every time.

Chris:

At worst, what happens to sites that reference these fonts if the fonts you're hosting are down? Would you use a substitute font or something?

Raph:

Yes, the alternative font is used, which is just a CSS, and designers have full control over what fonts to use. In addition, if you want to have better control, you can use the Webfont loader, for example, when the font load fails, you can use JavaScript to change CSS, we will also work with all major browser developers to improve the Web font experience.

Chris:

Your cooperation with Typekit is very interesting, can you tell us something about it?

Raph:

Typekit is the furthest away from Web fonts, and we knew them early (in fact, Jeff Veen had done it at Google). So, naturally, we talked about it together. Our open fonts are good things, but we still want to have more fonts for users to use, and in addition, we work with other major font operators, including Ascender.

Chris:

Some free or open source fonts are typically advertised for their designers, and is this an obstacle to Google's font library? Ultimately, these font libraries have restricted fonts.

Raph:

So far, we have received a very good response. There are a number of reasons why people are contributing to our fonts, and one of the exact reasons is that it will bring them more traffic to help them sell more of their pay fonts. There are a lot of people who just like to design fonts, no matter what, we are confident to see our open Source Library more and more powerful. However, at any time, those professional font operators have higher quality fonts.