An overview of the benefits of using Typekit for web fonts as opposed to building your own CSS-only implementation.

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Major Issues in Comparing DIY web font performance versus
Adobe Typekit
1) Browser and device support: Typekit’s solution offers the widest ranges of support
for browsers and devices, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and
many others. Major vendors work directly with our team to ensure optimal
compatibility before release. Typekit is also the only solution that ensures forward
compatibility for future devices, which are sometimes released with missing or
imperfect web font support. In these cases, our architecture allows you to instantly get
the latest code with the click of a button (or fully automatically, depending on your
configuration choices), without having to refactor, re-test, and re-deploy your own
code.
2) HTTP transaction overhead: For browsers that support it, Typekit delivers all of the
fonts used in your page in a single file using a single HTTP request. The CSS-only
pattern for font loading can result in a separate request being made for each and every
font variation, which may have a negative effect on page load time and performance.
3) FOUT control using font events: Some browsers will render page text before the
font data has finished downloading, and then re-draw the text once the font download
is complete. This “Flash of Unstyled Text” occurs when loading fonts using CSS-only
method, but can easily be avoided using the Font Events provided by the Typekit
Javascript.
4) Font failover using font events: The Typekit Javascript also supports an
asynchronous loading pattern, which your web developers can use to avoid a lengthy
timeout if the fonts cannot be loaded for any reason.
5) Font processing: Typekit uses an extensive combination of commercial, open-
source, and proprietary tools to prepare fonts for use on the web. This extensive
process, which includes manual review and adjustment on a per-variation basis by our
type design and development experts, helps ensure the best possible rendering
outcomes across the widest variety of rendering environments. Our long-standing
relationships with the 50+ type foundries that offer fonts via Typekit provides the
capability to quickly respond to any issue that could affect our customers’ web sites.
No automated font processor can achieve this same standard of quality.
6) Content protection: Typekit provides a layer of content protection that discourages
casual misuse of web fonts. Customers who have invested in bespoke or customized
typefaces enjoy the same benefit that this provides to our foundry partners, many of
whom don’t permit their licensed type to be used on the web without protection.

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Specifically, hosting bare web font files on your server does nothing to prevent a third
party from “hot linking” your licensed type onto their own site, costing you money in
bandwidth and diluting the value of your investment.
7) Support: Typekit offers world-class technical support to our customers. Enterprise
customers enjoy a priority support queue with a guaranteed response time, as well as
access to telephone support during business hours. We help customers with
debugging a broad range of technical issues, from web font loading, optimizing
performance, to CSS and JavaScript issues. Our Type team also works with customers
on all manner of design and typography topics, including typeface selection, pairing,
and exploring custom font options.
8) Browser screenshots: Typekit provides browser samples of web font rendering
across more than 20 OS/browser combinations, which allows you to see exactly how
type will appear to end-users across a wide variety of rendering environments.
9) Subsetting: Typekit will soon offer the ability to customize the characters included
in your font based on language and the kinds of OpenType features you and your
designers intend to use. A font targeting English will often be 25% the size of the
original. Our subsetting engine has been extensively tested over the course of years,
enabling our customers to ensure that the most appropriate subset of font data is
delivered to each page.