Editorial pages

Editorial home

Web fonts for fine quality online typography

Desktop browser support for WOFF at 61,87 %

Mobile browser support for WOFF at 48.03 %

Legibility performance

Custom Type

Euro, a glyph for the European currency

Thank You

Kombinat-News

The Rollmops Affair

Our typeface Sonar-Sans got a namesake and then, unexpectedly they started to get along.

Mar 20,’13

The 2012 Type@Cooper Condensed Program

A look back onto the Type@Cooper Condensed Program 2012.

Aug 04,’12

Retail library

Font overview

Realist Narrow

Realist

Realist Wide

Sonar Sans

Interpol Sans

Interpol Serif

Ode

JC Corrido

JC Tieshy

JC BubbleJet on Steroids

JC Kugelkopf

Desktop browser support for WOFF at 61,87 %

→As of July 20, 2011 all major desktop browsers are now represented with a GA (General Availability) version offering WOFF support. This means all eyes are on the mobile browser market now.

It is worth mentioning though that specs for the WOFF format have not even been finalized yet. The WOFF specification was published as Candidate Recommendation on August 4, 2011.

Updates
(September 9, 2012): Usage share of all browser

by Hannes Famira
created Aug. 15, 2010
updated Sep. 15, 2012

☹

Does your browser support WOFF fonts? If you see the frowning emoticon here above the answer is unfortunately a big fat nope. However if you do have WOFF support it will say so too.

Desktop browsers supporting WOFF

Total usage share (100%) - September 2011

InternetExplorer (53.6%)

18.4% WOFF support →
version 9 and up since March 2011

Firefox (20.05%)

19.5% WOFF support →
version 3.6 and up since October 2009

Chrome

18.72% WOFF support →
version 5 and up since April 2010

Safari

4.09% WOFF support →
version 5.1 and up since July 2011

Opera

browser version supporting WOFF

old browser version for which a new version supporting woff is available

mobile browsers and browsers not supporting WOFF

Individual percentages (May 2011) courtesy of www.netmarketshare.com
Also compare StatCounter
While you're at it make sure to check this very detailed chart...

At a glance: Right now, how many web users can see WOFF?

The graphic above represents the state of affairs for the month of August, 2012. IEv.9 came out on 15 March 2011 and is surprisingly slow to proliferate. Keep in mind that these statistics are more than a little skewed though, considering the huge popularity IE6 still enjoys in China.

How did we get here?

In the summer of 2009 Kombinat-Typefounders along with a large number of colleagues and friends at some of our favorite type foundries, publicly put our support behind the Web Open Font Format. Of the design firms on my personal radar edenspiekerman_ were certainly the first to put their name squarely behind WOFF. Now the design community's focus turned to the browser manufacturers who quickly started showing interest in supporting this new font format too. At this point all major dektop browsers support WOFF.

✔

Microsoft Internet Explorer (53.6% usage share)

Last updated September 9, 2012

The GA version of IE9 supporting WOFF was made available world wide (localized language versions) on 15 March, 2011.
Microsoft was one of the parties submitting the WOFF format to the W3 Consortium on April 8 2010. Then on June 23 2010 the preview 3 build of IE9 showed up and indeed WOFF support was one of the new features. The release candidate (the last version before the official final build) was unveiled on February 10, 2011.

Recommended read

Microsoft: download IE9
An interesting tidpit to help shed some light on the projected proliferation of IE9: Microsoft posts countdown to kill IE6

✔

Firefox (20.05%)

Last updated September 9, 2012

Firefox 3.6.11 GA release, is still supporting WOFF on October 20, 2010. The first Browser to offer a beta release that supported WOFF was Firefox 3.6 on October 20 2009.

Recommended read

hacks.mozilla.org: Web Open Font Format for Firefox 3.6

✔

Google Chrome (19%)

Last updated September 9, 2012

On April 26 2010 Webmonkey annonced that Chrome will support the WOFF format. Chrome has been supporting WOFF since version 5 which was released in April 2010.

Recommended read

Webmonkey: Google Chrome to support the Web Open Font Format

✔

Apple Safari (4.64%)

Last updated September 9, 2012

With version 5.1, which is part of the Lion update, Safari is the last of the big browsers to finally implement WOFF support.

The technology purring under Safari's hood is called WebKit. On August 12, 2010 there was a "nightly build" of WebKit — version 5.0.1, an early beta release if you will — that supported WOFF.

• In spite of a major system update (v. 10.6.5) on November 11, 2010 and the latest discrete Safari update taking it to version 5.0.5 (made available on April 15, 2011) Safari still does not support WOFF.

Recommended read

Safari Dev Center: Safari 5.1 Developer Preview Now Available
Flicker: LettError's photostream | Safari nightly based on Webkit r65222

✔

Opera (2%)

Last updated September 9, 2012

The latest GA version v.11.11 offers full WOFF support and is available for download now.

Opera is one of the three organizations that submitted the WOFF format to the W3 Consortium. On February 17, 2011 the Opera Desktop Team reported on their blog the first beta version called "Barracuda" featuring WOFF support and followed up on 9 March with the article Introducing WOFF on their Dev.Opera blog.

Recommended read

• DevOpera: Introducing WOFF.