Web typography: past, present and future

It doesn't seem so long ago that front-end developers were employing all manner of techniques to use more than just the set of fonts installed on the user's computer. Now we have @font-face, OpenType features, WOFF (a font format specifically optimised for the web), and variable fonts. These developments allow us to create rich typographic experiences. This comes with a performance cost, though: web pages become bigger and heavier. That means a slower page that comes with more data to load.

This talk will cover the intersection of beautiful web typography and performance. We'll discuss the history of fonts on the web, how to enable rich typographic features, and how to load web fonts efficiently.

About the speaker:
Justin Slack is head of design, user experience, and front-end development at NML (https://nml.co.za). He is fluent in HTML and CSS, and slightly obsessive about typography, web standards, and user experience.