About the Woff2 file format
- Name
- Web Open Font Format 2.0 File
- Extension
- .woff2
- Format
- Binary
- Category
- Font
- Developer
- WebFonts Working Group
- Description
- The Web Open Font Format 2.0 (WOFF2) file is a modern font format designed specifically for use on the web. It is an evolution of the WOFF format, offering improved compression and thus smaller file sizes, which enhances web performance by reducing the time it takes for fonts to load. WOFF2 supports the same customization and features as its predecessor, but with more efficient encoding and compression mechanisms.
- MIME Type
- application/font-woff2
- Sample
- sample.woff2
- Wikipedia
- .woff2 on Wikipedia
Web Open Font Format File (WOFF) is a font format used on webpages. Web Fonts Working Group developed it. The files in this format are either TrueType fonts or Open formats though they have some additional metadata. The format was developed to distinguish between font files used on the web and those used on desktop applications. Also, it was intended to improve latency experienced during transmission from a server to a client via a network connection.
WOFF file format has an in-built compression. The original WOFF version has been put in suspension by the WOFF2 version as it offers a much better compression algorithm. The compression can reduce the original files by 30 percent more compared to the original WOFF version. WOFF2 is also able to consume less bandwidth and loads even faster than the WOFF file format.
The file delivers webpage fonts on the fly and saves them as compressed containers. As they support both the True Type (TTF) and Open Type (OTF) fonts, web developers get an opportunity to use the custom fonts in place of the standard web fonts. The WOFF file uses the .woff extension while the WOFF2 file uses the .woff2 extension type.
Microsoft internet explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Fontforge programs can open the WOFF files.