WOFF

WOFF — Web Open Font Format

WOFF (Web Open Font Format) is the standard wrapper for delivering fonts to web browsers. It is not really a new font format — it is a compressed envelope that contains a TrueType or OpenType font plus some lightweight metadata. Every browser released since 2010 supports WOFF natively, which made @font-face truly portable for the first time. WOFF is what put high-quality custom typography on the web at scale, and it remains a useful fallback for legacy browser environments.

History

Erik van Blokland, Tal Leming, and Jonathan Kew designed WOFF in 2009 and Mozilla shipped support in Firefox 3.6 in early 2010. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Opera all followed within the year, making WOFF the first universally supported web font format. The W3C made WOFF a Recommendation in December 2012. Before WOFF, designers either embedded fonts via proprietary services like Typekit or shipped raw .ttf and .otf files, which made copyright-conscious foundries refuse to license their fonts for the web. WOFF's lightweight metadata block changed that — by 2014 hundreds of foundries had opened web licences, and the era of generic web typography ended. Today WOFF survives mainly as a compatibility fallback inside @font-face src chains, sitting between modern WOFF2 and ancient raw TTF for the narrow slice of browser versions that fall between the two thresholds. Designers building for the public internet rarely ship it any more; designers building corporate intranets ship it constantly.

When to use WOFF

Supporting older browsers — IE9, IE10, IE11, early Android Browser
Building a fallback chain that ships WOFF2 first and WOFF for legacy
Embedding fonts behind a foundry licence that requires the WOFF metadata block
Internal corporate apps locked to old browser baselines

Convert WOFF to other formats

Convert other formats to WOFF

Frequently asked questions

Do I still need WOFF in 2026?

Probably not for the public internet — every browser released since 2018 supports WOFF2, which is smaller. WOFF is still useful for corporate environments running pinned older browsers, or as a fallback inside a @font-face src chain.

What is the difference between WOFF and WOFF2?

WOFF compresses the underlying font with zlib (deflate). WOFF2 uses Brotli, which is roughly 30 percent more efficient on font payloads. Functionally they carry the same TrueType or OpenType data inside; only the compression envelope differs.

Can I open a WOFF file in my font editor?

Most modern font editors (Glyphs, FontLab, RoboFont, FontForge) can open WOFF directly. If yours cannot, convert WOFF to TTF or OTF first using our online converter.