14 DAY TRIAL // Opera is announcing that the upcoming Opera 11.10 will include support for WOFF, a web font container format that has been adopted by browser makers and developers alike. It aims to enable web designers to let their imaginations loose and move beyond the standard type of fonts historically used by all websites.
Despite being one of Web Open Font Format's early supporters, Opera is one of the last major browser maker to include support for the technology. Firefox, Chrome and IE9 already include support for WOFF.
"In Opera 11.10, we've included support for a new font packaging format called Web Open Font Format (WOFF). This format acts as a container for TrueType and OpenType fonts, reducing file size, and allowing you to include extra information in with the font, such as font licensing," Opera wrote.
WOFF, like other web-based font formats, enable developers to use any font they choose on their sites regardless if the user has it installed locally or not. Until very recently, developers have been limited to a small set of fonts that were guaranteed to work for everyone.
Using the @font-face CSS property, the fonts are downloaded along with the other resources of the site.
WOFF is a relatively recent creation, but it's not really a new format. Rather, it's a container for the existing OpenType and TrueType formats. However, it adds several key features.
For one, it uses compression to make the download size smaller. It's a losses type of compression so no data is lost. This alone would not justify the new format, since the same effect could be achieved by using HTTP compression.
But WOFF also adds a meta-data layer, enabling font creators and providers to add a number of useful info to the font, such as license details. The format is already used by a number of web foundries which enable developers to license and use the fonts they provide.