WOFF 2.0 fonts will be supported in the Anniversary Update

May 3, 2016 17:56 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has just revealed that the upcoming Anniversary Update will add support for WOFF 2.0 fonts, which means that the new Edge browser will benefit from increased page loading speed once this version is released.

Redmond says that version 14.14316 is the first one to come with this feature, so if you’re already running Windows 10 build 14316, support for WOFF 2.0 fonts is already there. In other words, insiders enrolled in the fast ring are currently the only ones that can try it out, but with the upcoming Anniversary Update, anyone on Windows 10 gets it.

So what’s WOFF 2.0 font support, you might ask. Basically, this new standard allows for a new compression method for font files, which means that page loading times are decreased because the browser has to load files with smaller sizes. Approximately 60 percent of websites out here use custom fonts, the company says, and these fonts account for 5.3 percent of the average webpage size.

Font files compressed up to 30 percent

By compressing font file size (up to 30 percent, according to Microsoft’s estimates), Microsoft Edge can “provide a substantial improvement” and load websites faster than before.

“WOFF 2 compresses fonts with Brotli to deliver more than 30% reduction in font file size over the earlier 2009-era W3C WOFF standard, which used zlib/compress2. WOFF 2 also uses font-specific compression based on the MicroType Express format that first used in web fonts in the EOT font format,” the software giant explains.

The same WOFF 2.0 font compression system is already being used by modern browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, with Apple planning to add it to Safari browser as well sometime in the future.

The Anniversary Update is coming in the summer, most likely in July, and will bring improvements on both PCs and smartphones. Edge is one of the apps that will be significantly overhauled, with the company to finally introduce extension support for the app and bring it in line with other modern browsers on the market.