@font-face

Summary

The @font-face CSS at-rule allows authors to specify online fonts to display text on their web pages. By allowing authors to provide their own fonts, @font-face eliminates the need to depend on the limited number of fonts users have installed on their computers. The @font-face at-rule may be used not only at the top level of a CSS, but also inside any CSS conditional-group at-rule.

Syntax

@font-face {
              [ font-family: <family-name>; ]?
           || [ src: [ <uri> [format(<string>#)]? | <font-face-name> ]#; ]?
           || [ unicode-range: <urange>#; ]?
           || [ font-variant: <font-variant>; ]?
           || [ font-feature-settings: normal|<feature-tag-value>#; ]?
           || [ font-stretch: <font-stretch>; ]?
           || [ font-weight: <weight>; ]?
           || [ font-style: <style>; ]?
}

Descriptors

family-name: Specifies a name that will be used as the font face value for font properties. ( i.e. font-family: <family-name>; )
src: URL for the remote font file location, or the name of a font on the user's computer in the form local("Font Name"). You can specify a font on the user's local computer by name using the local() syntax. If that font isn't found, other sources will be tried until one is found.
font-variant: A font-variant value.
font-stretch: A font-stretch value.
font-weight: A font-weight value.
font-style: A font-style value.
unicode-range: The range of unicode code points defined in the font-face rule.

Examples

This example simply specifies a downloadable font to use, applying it to the entire body of the document.

View the live example

<html>
<head>
  <title>Web Font Sample</title>
  <style type="text/css" media="screen, print">
    @font-face {
      font-family: "Bitstream Vera Serif Bold";
      src: url("https://mdn.mozillademos.org/files/2468/VeraSeBd.ttf");
    }
    
    body { font-family: "Bitstream Vera Serif Bold", serif }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  This is Bitstream Vera Serif Bold.
</body>
</html>

In this example, the user's local copy of "Helvetica Neue Bold" is used; if the user doesn't have that font installed (two different names are tried), then the downloadable font named "MgOpenModernaBold.ttf" is used instead:

@font-face {
  font-family: MyHelvetica;
  src: local("Helvetica Neue Bold"),
       local("HelveticaNeue-Bold"),
       url(MgOpenModernaBold.ttf);
  font-weight: bold;
}

Notes

Web fonts are subject to the same domain restriction (font files must be on the same domain as the page using them), unless HTTP access controls are used to relax this restriction.
Because there are no defined MIME types for TrueType, OpenType, and Web Open File Format (WOFF) fonts, the MIME type of the file specified is not considered.
When Gecko displays a page that uses web fonts, it initially displays text using the best CSS fallback font available on the user's computer while it waits for the web font to finish downloading. As each web font finishes downloading, Gecko updates the text that uses that font. This allows the user to read the text on the page more quickly.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
WOFF File Format 2.0 The definition of 'WOFF2 font format' in that specification.	Working Draft	Font format specification with new compression algorithm
WOFF File Format 1.0 The definition of 'WOFF font format' in that specification.	Recommendation	Font format specification
CSS Fonts Module Level 3 The definition of '@font-face' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation

Feature	Firefox (Gecko)	Chrome	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	3.5 (1.9.1)	4.0	4.0	10.0	3.1
WOFF	3.5 (1.9.1)	6.0	9.0	11.10	5.1
WOFF2	35 (35) behind a pref [1]	38	Not supported	24	Not supported
SVG Font	Not supported Unimplemented (see bug 119490)	(Yes)	Not supported	(Yes)	(Yes)
`unicode-range`	36 (36)	(Yes)	9.0	(Yes)	(Yes)

Feature	Android	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	IE Mobile	Opera Mini	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile
Basic support	(Yes)	1.0 (1.9.1)	?	Not supported	10.0	(Yes)
WOFF	4.4	5.0 (5.0)	10.0	Not supported	11.0	5.0
WOFF2	Not supported	35.0 (35.0) behind a pref [1]	Not supported	?	?	Not supported
SVG fonts	?	Not supported Unimplemented (see bug 119490)	?	Not supported	10.0	(Yes)
`unicode-range`	?	36.0 (36.0)	?	Not supported	?	(Yes)

[1] WOFF2 supports in Gecko 35 is only activated by default on Aurora and Nightly versions. To use it on Beta and Release versions, the user needs to set the gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled preference to true.

Notes

Support of the Embedded OpenType font format is not included in the compatibility table because it is a proprietary feature. Prior to IE 9.0, IE supported only this format.
TrueType and OpenType are not included because they are superseded by WOFF.
The same origin policy is not implemented in WebKit based browsers like Safari and Mobile Safari. This was also true for Blink based browsers, until Septermber, 2014 - Chrome 37 and Opera 24.

@font-face

Summary

Syntax

Descriptors

Examples

Notes

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Notes

See also

MDN

External

Document Tags and Contributors