SVG font icons deprecated?

[mat...@ecologyfund.com]

I'm just wondering what the following means exactly, and how it will affect icoMoon fonts?:

http://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5930075908210688

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Keyamoon]

It just means that SVG fonts are no longer going to be supported in Chrome. IcoMoon generates WOFF, TTF, EOT and SVG fonts; so this change doesn't affect IcoMoon fonts.

[mat...@ecologyfund.com]

So does this mean we should remove the SVG font file and reference in the CSS to it, and thus, just use the WOFF, TTF and EOT fonts? Sounds like other browsers are no longer going to support it as well. Thank you.

[Keyamoon]

There's no need to remove the SVG font or the reference to it. The browser will load the first appropriate format that it supports. If you look at the @font-face rule in the style.css files that IcoMoon generates, you'll see references to all formats. SVG comes last. The browser will load the first font file that it supports (which is most likely going to be WOFF) and ignores the rest of them. It is better to leave the SVG font in place, just in case an old browser that only supports SVG fonts needs it.

[zachlea...@gmail.com]

Actually, this isn’t quite true.

I think it’s a good idea to remove them.

More information: https://github.com/scottjehl/Device-Bugs/issues/43

[Keyamoon]

Well, I was talking about the CSS that IcoMoon generates. Using that media query hack to force loading the SVG was a bad idea in the first place. In the CSS that IcoMoon generates, SVG comes last in the @font-face rule, which means that the browsers that only support SVG fonts would use it. Other browsers won't request, download or use the SVG font at all.

[zachlea...@gmail.com]

Yeah, I was talking about IcoMoon’s CSS too. As pointed out in the GitHub issue, SVG fonts are the only kind of @font-face supported on Blackberry 6 and have major rendering issues.

Here’s an opinion from Bram Stein, who works on TypeKit: https://twitter.com/bram_stein/status/506812176212824066

The only possible argument for still including them is iOS 4.1 (4.3 supports TTF), which according to caniuse currently has 0% global market share: http://caniuse.com/#search=svg fonts

[Keyamoon]

It is true that SVG fonts don't have kerning but kerning doesn't matter when it comes to icon fonts. Are there any other disadvantages to serving them? They can't hurt, can they?

[zachlea...@gmail.com]

Yeah, here’s the big one I’ve confirmed: https://twitter.com/lyzadanger/status/233011519422619649

I don’t know if TypeKit has more stuff documented internally.

[Keyamoon]

Okay, so that BB browser doesn't support SVG fonts properly; but still, in the case of icon fonts, it would be a single character that doesn't get rendered properly, which isn't very different from not serving the font at all. On the other hand, it is quite possible that a browser may only support SVG fonts (and do it properly). Why not keep the SVG font just in case it was needed? I think that for icon fonts, serving the SVG font can't hurt. SVG fonts can also be imported to the IcoMoon app, which is handy.