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Legacy Web Projects and Digital Ads
Supriya Bisht avatar
Written by Supriya Bisht
Updated this week

Starting from November 30, 2022, Monotype has sunsetted our old legacy web font services. This means we no longer support edits to legacy web projects and digital ad lists that were created before August 2021 using old legacy technology.

All projects created after August 2021 utilize the latest web font hosting services.

What happens to existing legacy web projects?

For web projects and digital ad lists created before August 2021, tools to add or edit additional fonts will be restricted, and these web project or digital ad list will be marked with a "legacy" icon.

Legacy web project indicator

You will be restricted from:

  • Adding new fonts to the legacy web project or digital ad lists.

  • Removing fonts from the legacy lists.

  • Subsetting the existing fonts in a legacy list.

  • Editing the names and domains of these web projects.

  • Deleting these web projects.

You will still be able to:

  • Download the Web Project Self-Hosted Kit, as was originally created.

  • Utilize the original Monotype CDN hosted font with the links.

  • Copy the legacy CSS of the older web project, to be used with the @font-face declaration, with the name of the font and the URL copied from the web project.

  • Use the JavaScript tab to include for dynamic subsetting on the original set of fonts placed in the project.

  • Share the web projects.

Please note: Projects migrated from fonts.com will be placed on legacy services.


What's new with the next generation of web projects and digital ads?

The new web font services technology is much better equipped to deal with the large sizes of modern day fonts and efficiently support the very large character sets that creative teams require. Updated subsetting technology achieves subsets that serve the needs of the modern web without making the process slow, unreliable, or unstable.

Here are more details on what’s new with the latest web hosting technology:

Additional CSS Features

Creative users have the freedom to customize font face declaration to add custom properties:

@font-face { 
font-family: "fontFamilyName";
font-style: inherit;
font-weight: 100;
font-stretch: ultra-condensed;
src: url('CustomizedWebFonts/fontFamilyName_inherit_ultra-condensed_100_subset1.woff') format('woff'), url('CustomizedWebFonts/fontFamilyName_inherit_ultra-condensed_100_subset1.woff2') format('woff2'); unicode-range: 'U+007A-006A';
}

In addition to that, you can now specify unicode ranges to load font subsets.

Simplified SHK Tracking Setup and Enhanced Tracking

  • The self-hosted kits no longer require you to place any additional files (like mtitrackingcode.js) among the files uploaded to the server.

  • Additional scripts added to the CSS improve the accuracy of pageview tracking mechanisms and remove a touchpoint in your webpage setup process.

  • There is additional guidance documentation included as part of the downloaded kit:

    • CSS files are included to view the implementation guidelines of your web fonts including the sample.

    • The most optimal, recommended CSS for usage as per subset configurations and web projects built by the user are provided as an additional step.

Heuristic Subsetting for CJK Fonts

Our new and improved web font services include a heuristic mechanism for driving subsetting in bulky CJK fonts. Heuristic subsetting involves slicing the original CJK font into many small pieces. Each slice is picked up by a @font-face rule in a CSS file. Each of these rules have the same family name, but link to different slices that cover different Unicode ranges. The more efficiently the Unicodes are grouped together, the fewer slices the browser needs to download.

Licensing

License information for Monotype sourced fonts is now available in the metadata of web fonts. You can also add and adjust the copyright information.

Additional self-help documentation with the downloaded Self-Hosted Kits.

Sample Web Fonts implementation

File: startHere.html

Open the "startHere.html" file to view the implementation guidelines for your web fonts, including the sample CSS. It also contains some basic troubleshooting steps in case you face any issues using the web fonts.

It also contains the highlight section to view rendering of web fonts in different point sizes using a waterfall model.

WebProject CSS

File: <Unique WebProject Id>.css

This is the recommended CSS to use for your website along with web fonts. It is configured for optimal performance while downloading the web fonts for rendering.

It also contains a link to our tracking CSS "1.css" on the top, which is tied to the web project created on Monotype Fonts.

This CSS tracks web font usage and pushes the tracked information back to Monotype Fonts for reporting and licensing purposes.

Improvements in Availability and Performance

  • More efficient CDN hosting mechanisms behind publisher services, which help bring about > 99 percent availability of fonts

  • More identifiable font names while using CSS

  • Improved archival efficiency for customers with a large number of web projects

  • Better logging and monitoring mechanisms for hosted web fonts

  • 70 percent less time spent on preparatory processes for downloading large web kits

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