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How to Fix the Text Remains Visible Issue

How to Fix the Text Remains Visible Issue

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Understanding the “Ensure Text Remains Visible During Webfont Load” Issue

When a website uses web fonts, it’s crucial to manage how these typefaces are loaded and displayed to prevent negative impacts on user experience and site performance. A common problem encountered is the Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT), which can significantly affect both the user’s interaction with the site and its search engine optimization (SEO) metrics.

What is a Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT)?

FOIT occurs when web fonts are loading, and the text is invisible, leaving users waiting for text to appear. This happens because the browser is downloading the typeface files needed to display the text properly. During this time, no text is shown, which can lead to a poor user experience, as the content is essentially inaccessible until the font has finished loading.

The Impact on UX and SEO

The way a site loads its fonts can have a profound impact on both user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO), affecting everything from how users interact with the site to how it ranks in search engine results.

User Experience (UX)

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the loading performance of a site, specifically looking at the time it takes for the largest content element in the viewport to become visible. FOIT can delay the LCP, as the text is a significant content element that remains invisible while fonts are loading.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS measures the stability of content as it loads. If text shifts position once the webfont loads, it can cause a higher CLS score, indicating a less stable and more frustrating user experience.

First Input Delay (FID): FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction. While FOIT primarily affects visual rendering, if webfont loading blocks the main thread, it can also impact FID by delaying the browser’s response to user inputs.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google and other search engines prioritize user experience as a ranking factor. Sites that exhibit poor performance metrics, such as slow LCP or high CLS, can be penalized in search rankings. Therefore, addressing FOIT not only improves the user experience but also aids in maintaining or improving a website’s SEO performance.

Effects on Google’s PageSpeed Insights

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool evaluates the speed and performance of web pages, offering insights into various metrics, including LCP, CLS, and FID. FOIT can negatively impact these scores, leading to lower PageSpeed Insights scores. Since these scores can influence a website’s visibility and ranking in search results, mitigating FOIT is essential for both user experience and SEO.

How to Check the Issue

In this screenshot of the Sitechecker SEO tool, we’re focusing on the ‘Page Speed’ category, which highlights various issues that could be slowing down your website.

Page Speed Issues

By selecting ‘View issue’ next to each listed problem, you can access a detailed list of pages affected by specific page speed concerns. This includes elements like oversized images, excessive DOM size, and JavaScript file size issues. It’s not just about the number of affected pages; the tool provides a clear visual representation of the dynamics of these issues, allowing you to track their impact over time. Simplifying the process, Sitechecker empowers you to identify and rectify page speed issues to enhance user experience and website performance.

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Solutions for Various Platforms

Ensuring text remains visible during webfont load is crucial for improving both the user experience and website performance across different platforms. Here are tailored solutions for popular font services and platforms:

Google Fonts

Google Fonts provides a variety of open-source typefaces. To ensure text remains visible while fonts are loading, leverage the font-display CSS feature in your @font-face rule. Google Fonts now includes this feature directly in their CSS snippets, allowing you to choose strategies like swap, fallback, or optional to control font loading behavior.

Adobe Fonts (Typekit)

Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) offers a rich library of premium fonts. Adobe Fonts automatically includes typeface loading strategies to ensure maximum compatibility and performance across browsers. For custom control, you can use the Adobe Fonts API to specify loading behavior or integrate with your site’s CSS to use font-display settings.

Font Awesome

Font Awesome icons can significantly enhance a website’s design, but they also need to be loaded efficiently to prevent FOIT.

Asynchronous Loading Script

Use Font Awesome’s asynchronous loading script to load icons as soon as they’re available without blocking the rest of the page. This method helps in keeping the text visible while the icons are being loaded.

Fallback Fonts

Define fallback fonts in your CSS for times when the Font Awesome icons take longer to load. This ensures that users can still interact with textual content or basic icon placeholders.

Preloading CSS

Preload the Font Awesome CSS in your website’s <head> to instruct the browser to prioritize loading icon fonts. This can be done using the <link rel=”preload” as=”style”> attribute, which reduces the time until icons are displayed.

Custom Font Icons

Custom font icons, created or curated specifically for your project, require careful handling to ensure they don’t cause text invisibility issues.

Elementor Icons (eicons and Font Awesome)

When using Elementor, a popular WordPress page builder, you can manage how icons—both Elementor’s own and Font Awesome—are loaded. Elementor provides options to selectively load icon libraries only where needed, reducing overall load times and mitigating FOIT.

Custom Fonts

Using custom fonts through CSS or webfont services adds personality to your site but comes with its own set of challenges.

Using Elementor

Elementor allows for easy integration of custom fonts. Within Elementor, you can directly specify font-display settings for any custom typeface you upload, ensuring that text remains visible during font loading. This is done through the Elementor editor, under the custom font settings, where you can select the appropriate font loading strategy.

Strategies to Ensure Text Visibility

To mitigate the issues associated with webfont loading, such as the Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT), developers and site owners can employ several strategies. These techniques are designed to enhance user experience by ensuring text remains visible during webfont load, thus improving both the performance and accessibility of a website.

Font-display Options

The font-display CSS property offers a powerful way to control typeface display behavior. This property dictates how a browser should render text while downloading web fonts, offering several values to choose from:

swap

Description: The swap value instructs the browser to use a fallback font to display the text immediately and swap it with the webfont once it loads. This ensures that users see text content without delay, albeit initially in a different typeface.

Usage: font-display: swap;

fallback

Description: With fallback, the browser shows a fallback font if the webfont doesn’t load within a short period (usually about 100 milliseconds). If the webfont loads after this period, it will replace the fallback font.

Usage: font-display: fallback;

optional

Description: The optional value gives the browser discretion to use the webfont or not based on the user’s connection speed and whether the font is already cached. It prioritizes user experience and loading speed over font consistency.

Usage: font-display: optional;

WordPress Specific Fixes

For WordPress users, ensuring text remains visible during webfont load can be streamlined through manual fixes and plugin solutions, catering to different levels of technical expertise and site needs.

Manual Fixes

Specify a Fallback Font: Always specify a fallback font in your CSS font-family stack, ensuring text is visible with a similar style font while the webfont loads.

Use the font-display Property: Implement the font-display property in your site’s CSS for each @font-face declaration.

Preload Web Fonts: Use the <link rel=”preload”> tag in your site’s <head> to preload the most important fonts, reducing the load time.

Optimize Font Loading: Limit the number of font styles and weights to only those that are necessary, reducing the amount of data needed to be downloaded.

Plugin Solutions

WP Rocket: While primarily a caching plugin, WP Rocket also offers features to optimize Google Fonts loading, including font-display behavior customization.

OMGF | Host Google Fonts Locally: This plugin allows you to host Google Fonts locally, reducing external HTTP requests and giving you more control over font loading behavior.

Asset CleanUp: Use this plugin to manage and optimize the loading of your fonts and stylesheets, allowing you to specify which pages fonts should load on and reducing unnecessary loads.

These strategies and tools can significantly improve the loading time of your web fonts, ensuring that your text remains visible to users, enhancing both the usability and performance of your site.

How to fix ensure text remains visible during webfont load

Ensuring text remains visible during webfont load involves addressing several common problems that can arise. Here are troubleshooting tips that can help you optimize the loading of fonts and minimize the impact on your site’s performance and user experience.

Troubleshooting Tips

Optimizing Local Fonts

Convert to WOFF2: Convert your font files to WOFF2 format, which offers the best compression and is supported by all modern browsers. This reduces the font file size and speeds up loading.

Subset Fonts: Create subsets of your fonts that include only the characters you need. This is particularly useful for languages with large character sets or when using icon fonts.

Font Loading Strategy: Implement a font loading strategy using JavaScript or CSS techniques to load fonts dynamically based on the needs of the page, reducing initial load times.

Reducing Font Size

Limit Font Variants: Only include the font styles and weights that are actually used on your site. Each variant adds to the download size, so eliminating unused styles can make a significant difference.

Use Font Tools: Utilize font tools to remove unnecessary glyphs and features from your fonts. Tools like FontForge or online webfont generators allow for custom font subsetting and optimization.

Leveraging CDN

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Hosting your fonts on a CDN can significantly improve loading times by serving fonts from a server closest to the user’s location. This is particularly effective for websites with a global audience.

Cache Fonts Effectively: Ensure that your fonts are being cached by the browser. Proper caching can prevent fonts from being reloaded on repeat visits, speeding up the site’s performance.

System Font Stack

Fallback to System Fonts: In your CSS font stack, include a list of similar system fonts that can be used if the custom font fails to load. This ensures that the text remains visible and the layout remains intact.

Performance Benefit: Using a system font stack can significantly improve performance for first-time visitors, as no font files need to be downloaded before displaying text.

CSS Example: font-family: ‘Your Webfont’, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ‘Segoe UI’, Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, ‘Helvetica Neue’, sans-serif;

By addressing these common problems with strategic solutions, you can ensure a smoother, faster webfont loading process that maintains text visibility and enhances the overall user experience on your website.

Conclusion

Addressing the Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT) is crucial for enhancing user experience and SEO. Effective strategies include using the font-display property, optimizing webfonts for platforms like Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts, and implementing fixes for WordPress sites. Techniques such as asynchronous loading, fallback fonts, preloading CSS, and optimizing local fonts can significantly improve text visibility and site performance. By prioritizing efficient webfont loading, we ensure a better user experience and support our website’s performance and search engine ranking.

FAQ
The font-display: block setting makes the text invisible for a short period (block period) while the font is loading. If the font hasn't loaded by the end of this period, a fallback font is shown. Use it when you prefer to wait for the font to load before showing any text, minimizing layout shifts.
Yes, mobile devices often have slower network speeds and less powerful processors than desktops, making efficient font loading even more crucial. Strategies like font subsetting, using font-display, and preloading important fonts can have a more significant impact on improving mobile performance.
Hosting fonts locally can offer performance benefits by reducing external requests and giving you more control over caching. However, third-party services like Google Fonts provide ease of use, global CDN delivery, and automatic updates. The best choice depends on your specific performance goals and maintenance preferences.
Use tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, or WebPageTest to analyze your site's performance with detailed reports on font loading times and recommendations for improvement. These tools help identify how webfonts affect metrics like LCP, FID, and CLS.
For icon fonts like Font Awesome, best practices include using the asynchronous loading script for non-blocking loading, defining fallback icons for essential user interface elements, and preloading the icon font CSS if the icons are critical to the initial user experience. Also, consider using SVGs for icons when possible, as they can offer more flexibility and performance benefits.
The choice depends on your balance between font rendering and content visibility. Use swap for immediate text visibility with a quick font swap, fallback for a short invisible text period with a fallback font, and optional for potentially no font swap based on user conditions. Consider your audience, website design, and performance goals when choosing.
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