545012 - Get rid of MetaWebPro-Book.woff on mozilla.com

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

There was a lot of objection to putting MetaWebPro-Book on mozilla.com in bug 540859 but it felt like that got pushed aside in favor of hitting deadlines for an existing plan.

So I'm bringing it up again.  The licensing on that font file is too restrictive and is cumbersome for us to support and use.  It's starting to spread to other sites (bug 544998) and I think there should be a plan to replace it before it does.

Does that font provide something that free and open fonts don't?

Comment 1

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Also see bug 544536, comment #2 for mention of an open source font that could possibly be used.

Comment 2

[John Slater]

This is a great topic for discussion and I definitely think we (webdev, marketing, evangelism, etc) should have a constructive conversation about it more to find a solution that meets everyone's needs.

Simply removing this font from mozilla.com, though, isn't that solution so I'm marking this particular bug as WONTFIX. We use Meta b/c it's the font used in the Firefox, Thunderbird & Mozilla logos. There's a lot of brand equity built up in those wordmarks and we'd like to continue to support that. That's a legitimate business reason to continue using the font.

I also think there's a bit of misunderstanding about how we'd use this font. Before we had the WOFF version, we basically never used it outside the wordmarks, and I don't expect that to change very much...now I'd only expect us to use it in complementary situations. I would be opposed to using Meta Bold universally for stylistic reasons. That's not to say we wouldn't consider using an alternate version (such as Meta Serif) at some point, but we wouldn't do that until all the technical issues had been resolved (hence my suggestion for a constructive conversation).

I know there was a lot of back & forth in bug 540859 about how to best do this, but in the end it seems like we hit upon a workable solution. Is the final scope and implementation really that cumbersome?

Personally, I would rather focus on finding more inclusive solutions such as the fonts.mozilla.com option that was proposed rather than writing off the use of a font that has represented Mozilla for years.

To sum up: this topic certainly warrants additional discussion, but I don't support completely removing it from mozilla.com

Comment 3

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

I don't understand -- couldn't we choose an open font, ship it with Firefox so people don't have to download 70K+ of font every time they visit our sites, and use that?

I thought the Firefox logo held more weight than the accompanying wordmark in terms of street cred and brand recognition -- is that not true?

Comment 4

[John Slater]

The answer to both questions in comment #3 is yes, but that doesn't change what I said in comment #2. This is definitely something we'll address in 2011.

Comment 5

[David Boswell]

The best forum for further discussion about the web fonts issue is the next websites task force on January 13.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Taskforce/2011_01_13

There's a current draft web fonts proposal that people are welcome to read now and help us get ready to roll out next year.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Taskforce/Proposals/Web_Fonts

Comment 6

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Thanks David!

Comment 7

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

We'll talk about this in January.  Please bring data to support your arguments.