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I noticed when running Pingdom speed test and viewing the file requests section, the test server downloads both .woff2 and .woff versions of each font from my site, declared using the standard @font-face css like below:

@font-face
 {
  font-family:'Roboto Condensed';
  src:url('../fonts/roboto-condensed-v16-latin-regular.woff2') 
  format('woff2'),url('../fonts/roboto-condensed-v16-latin-regular.woff') 
  format('woff');
  font-weight:400;
  font-style:normal;
 }

(I self host the Google fonts.)

So basically with 8 fonts used the test server requests 8 extra .woff files it doesn't really need.

Why is this happening? I tested the site using Chrome/Firefox developer tools and only .woff2 is retrieved as expected. Is this a bug with Pingdom?

Interestingly, I noticed that the test server only requested the .woff2 version of FontAwesome, even though the fontawesome css also referenced both .woff2 and .woff versions.

thankyoussd
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  • I noticed the exact same issue yesterday and came across this thread while searching for it on Google. Did you find the answer? – DFB Apr 29 '18 at 01:34
  • No, and I don't think Pingdom cares about it. I've since given up on the issue because it doesn't affect anything in the real world. If your goal is to look good on Pingdom you can just specify .woff no .woff2 (but then real world users actually lose a tiny bit of performance). If you want to go to the extreme to make it perfect, you can try one of those font loading javascripts that feeds font files depending on user agent (that's how the Google fonts api itself works). – thankyoussd Apr 29 '18 at 20:37
  • Thanks. You are right that it doesn't make a difference in the real world. In any case, I've written to Pingdom support to get clarification. If I hear back something noteworthy, I'll update it here. – DFB Apr 30 '18 at 04:02
  • I got a response from Pingdom support and they said that it may be a bug. They also said the test is pretty old and they are going to replace it (but haven't given any timeline). In the meanwhile I tried the GTmetrix test and they download only the woff2 file. I can post this as an answer if you want. – DFB Apr 30 '18 at 12:06

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