sxsphinxstack

Skills / Working / Optimize web font loading

Working Web skill

Optimize web font loading

Optimize web font loading for fast text, stable metrics, bounded files, and resilient fallback.

Deliver only the faces needed and make fallback acceptable at every moment.

Procedure

  1. Inventory families, weights, styles, scripts, pages, licenses, and actual use.
  2. Remove unused faces and subset only with verified language coverage.
  3. Prefer modern compressed formats and same-origin delivery where practical.
  4. Define preload only for critical above-fold faces and correct cross-origin behavior.
  5. Choose font-display from the content and brand tradeoff.
  6. Match fallback metrics to reduce reflow and preserve readable text.
  7. Set immutable cache URLs, correct MIME, CORS, and versioning.
  8. Test cold, warm, slow, offline, blocked-font, localization, and zoom cases.
  9. Measure text render, layout shift, transfer, and cache reuse before and after.

Guardrails

  • Do not subset away required languages or symbols.
  • Preloading every font competes with more critical resources.
  • Licensing terms remain part of deployment readiness.