Asking the expert: usage of italic font files

It is the main reason why there’s a Unload Italics link besides each stylesheet handle in OMGF. You basically never need them ??

Some fonts have a very specific style when in Italic, no font families come to mind, but in these scenarios you’d notice a significant difference when not loading italics.

However, in most cases, you don’t need italics, because browsers are perfect capable of mimicking them from the regular font.

Same goes for bold, however, browsers can’t mimick Medium, Light, etc. font-weights.

@daanvandenbergh Okay I did not know the browser could mimic it therefore we have to load them. I thought the handle was for the individual choices for what you need, don’t want or use all the weights 100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900 or italic. Had no idea they work perfectly fine without all special weights and styling and the browser can do so much itself.

Does this mimic apply to all popular browser of your knowledge? like Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc? Any caniuse on this type of feature to mimic, what should I look for?

So basically 400(normal) and 700(bold) the browser can mimic, the rest you need to load the font files. In most standard not complex “special” fonts you don’t need to load italic.

I see no difference in font-weight: 700; styled text once I block the woff file of 700.

In my case I have 400, 700 and 900. So I could remove 700, 400-italic and 700-italic.

Thats great then I can remove 3 font files to be loaded which means 92.6kb font files!

Many thanks for the answer Daan! ??

If all you need is regular (400) and bold (700) then 400 will suffice, because the browser can mimick 700 from 400.

This includes 400 italic and 700 italic. All you’ll need is 400. ??

If you need odd weights, like 100, 300 or 600, you’ll need to load them specifically.

And yes, this goes for all modern browsers on all platforms.

Now, this is my last message today, because I have some partying to do.

Happy King’s Day! ??

I use extra bold and 900 as well so I will need to load that specifally, but still can reduce it a lot, only need to load woff files for 400 and 900 ??

Thanks for the answers and enjoy your party, Happy King’s Day!