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Comment by Damien Guard on "Reduce Google Fonts file size by more than 80%" | Hashnode

Discussion

Damien Guard

Software Architect & Engineer

Oct 1, 2020

For popular fonts this will likely be slower and use more network access.

If they have already visited a site that uses the font you use by putting ?text= on the end you're forcing the browser to go off to Google to get your subset even though the full font file is sitting their in their browsers disk cache.

NostraDavid

Oct 1, 2020

This is outdated wisdom, due to security issues:

chromestatus.com/feature/5730772021411840 bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi

Using the advice in the article is just fine.

NostraDavid Indeed, looks like they went ahead and chose sidechannel leaking privacy over perf. If you follow a lot of the discussions they claim there's little to no perf benefit from using caches.

I wonder how many of their tests and experiences were on fat company pipes and gigabit home internet connections... :(

Damien Guard

Software Architect & Engineer

Oct 1, 2020

David Ojeda

Problem solver - Web and AWS developer

Oct 1, 2020

Thanks to both of you for the discussion!

So, cache works or don't? 🤔

Developer Console network tab with size column highlighted showing files served from cache

NostraDavid

Oct 1, 2020

David Ojeda From what I understand: Cache works, but if I go to example.com and load a woff font, I will have to redownload it for your site (doesn't matter if the URL is the same).

Damien Guard

Software Architect & Engineer

Oct 1, 2020

David Ojeda The cache is no longer shared between origins so there is literally no benefit to serving up from googlewebfonts, bootstrapcdn etc. any more.

If you have your own private CDN like Amazon CloudFront you may as well just copy the assets there now and be in full control.

David Ojeda

Problem solver - Web and AWS developer

Oct 1, 2020

NostraDavid Understood!

David Ojeda

Problem solver - Web and AWS developer

Oct 1, 2020

Damien Guard Got it. Good to know!