775117 - Downloadable fonts broken with typekit.com

Status: NEW

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

When using the iPhone user agent we get the following error on this page.

[11:13:17.921] downloadable font: not usable by platform (font-family: "prenton-condensed" style:normal weight:500 stretch:normal src index:0)
source: 

When using the Desktop user agent we get the a working font.

When using the Fennec user agent we don't get any font.

So it looks this is probably a problem with content we're being served. Still, it would be interesting to know why the iPhone font is unhappy.

Comment 1

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

It looks like this is actually a problem with typekit's ua sniffing.

Switching desktop FF to the Fennec UA breaks typekit on sites that I tested.

Comment 2

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

The broken UA is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:14.0) Gecko/14.0 Firefox/14.0

The working one is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0

Comment 3

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

John, any update on this?

Comment 4

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

Jeff, with the Fennec UA string I don't see a bad font being served, it looks like the Typekit doesn't define the @font-face rules at all in this case.

Can you retest and let me know if you see the platform font load error again?

Comment 5

[John Daggett (:jtd)]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a new profile
2. Enter the URL below:

  http://evening-edition.com/

Result: Evening Standard website renders with fonts from Typekit:

  FF Tisa Web Pro
  FF Meta Serif Web Pro
  Prenton Condensed

3. Change the default user agent:
  a. Enter about:config in the URL bar
  b. Click through the warning
  c. Right-click on any pref and select New > String
  d. Enter 'general.useragent.override' for the pref name
  e. Enter the string below for the string value: 

    Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Mobile; rv:14.0) Gecko/14.0 Firefox/14.0

4. Restart the browser using the same profile
5. Enter the same URL as in step (2)

Result: fonts from Typekit don't appear
Expected result: testpage shows same fonts

It appears the Javascript that loads fonts isn't adding the @font-face rules with this user agent string.

Note: this is slightly different from the behavior Jeff was seeing where a bad font was apparently being served to the browser.

Comment 6

[Sean McBride]

Hi, I'm one of the Typekit engineers. We added support for Firefox Mobile to newly published (or republished) kits around July 31, 2012. The kit on the Evening Edition site that John references was last published before we added Firefox Mobile support, so it won't load fonts for that browser. In order for that site to get support for Mobile Firefox (and the other mobile browsers that we launched support for on that day), the kit owner needs to go to typekit.com and republish their kit.

This is a part of the larger story around kit updating behavior. We don't currently update anything about a user's kit unless they explicitly ask for it by republishing their kit. This is so that small changes to fonts (like metrics or rendering) or the kit JS itself (like browser support changes or API changes) don't break a site without the author being there to notice it and fix it. We're investigating a feature that would allow users to publish kits that automatically update over time, but that's not currently the way that kits work.

Unfortunately this means that support for new browsers is only added as quickly as users publish new kits or republish existing kits. But the tradeoff is that users have control of the fonts and aren't surprised by unexpected changes that have bad side-effects.

You can check an example site of mine with a newly republished kit at http://seanmcb.com/resume, which has Typekit fonts working fine for me on Firefox Mobile for Android.

Comment 7

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Thanks Sean, that is very helpful information! Out of curiosity, is this information you have broadcast to your customers? If not, do you think nudging them in the direction of updating might be useful?

John, Jeff, might it also make sense for us to just start a list of sites we know use typekit and haven't updated, and contact those site authors on an individual basis to tell them what their site looks like on our browser, and what they can do to fix it?

Comment 8

[Sean McBride]

Ian: Yes, we broadcast information about updated browser support to our customers via blog posts and tweets, and we prompt them to republish their kit that way. Here's the relevant blog post: http://blog.typekit.com/2012/07/31/support-for-more-browsers-on-ios-and-android/