Google just released Chrome Frame a plug-in for Internet Explorer that makes IE act like Google’s Chrome browser.
Something of a peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate value proposition.
Considering Internet Explorer’s historic support for @font-face and that Google hasn’t formally turned @font-face support on in Chrome, I wondered if fonts delivered by Kernest would render as expected.
Yes. Just as expected.
Internet Explorer still requests and renders the EOT fonts like it has for decades.
Chocolately peanut butter, yum.
Nope. I was wrong. Chrome Frame breaks Internet Exploreres @font-face support.
Oh the irony of a browser promising better web technology support removing @font-face support.
So, What caused the false positive?
Chrome Frame doesn’t automatically activate itself upon installation (not what I expected). ‘Enabled’ isn’t ‘activated’. Big thanks to Paul Irish for pointing this out.
How to test for yourself load this URL in Chrome Frame
cf:http://kernest.com
The ‘cf:’ forces rendering in Chrome’s Webkit engine.
Richard – on the question of IE-Tab in Firefox: Yes, the IE engine calls EOT files and renders the font. Though, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
How about IE Tab for Firefox? Brings IE’s rendering engine into a tab in FF.
Haven’t had a chance to test fully. Similar idea to Chrome Frame. Does it pull the EOT or the TTF? (I’ve tested enough to know its pulling one or the other.)
Regards,
Rich
Garrick,
Yeah, Paul gave me a heads up via email and I immediately came back here to commisserate.
How dumb is this? A plug-in that breaks @font-face?
Strange, really strange.
rich
of course it “breaks @font-face support in IE”, because what Chrome Frame does is replace absolutely everything in IE except for its “chrome” (GUI), which means that absolutely everything rendered with Chrome Frame will look and behave a lot more similar to the respective Chrome build than to anything IE.