preloading font with rel preload

48
votes

I am preloading a font using the <link> HTML tag with the rel attribute set to preload as captured in the snippet below;

<link rel="preload" href="fonts/32ADEO.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2">

While this works as expected by loading the typeface, it gets loaded again.

The screenshot of the network tab in Google Chrome browser shows the typeface loading twice - see below;

enter image description here

Also, I get the following warning in the Google Chrome browser console tab;

The resource https://example.com/new-v8/fonts/32A0E0.woff2 was preloaded using link preload but not used within a few seconds from the window's load event. Please make sure it Please make sure it has an appropriate 'as' value and it is preloaded intentionally.

What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it?

4
htmlpreload
I got the same message when caling disqus plug-in: The resource https://c.disquscdn.com/next/embed/styles/lounge.188f59a1df04c219bf32da7f76545092.css was preloaded using link preload but not used within a few seconds from the window's load event. Please make sure it Please make sure it has an appropriate as value and it is preloaded intentionally. – Chetabahana
Purpose of preload: "specifying resources that your page will need very soon which you want to start loading early in the page lifecycle, before browsers' main rendering machinery kicks in. This ensures they are available earlier and are less likely to block the page's render, improving performance." developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Preloading_content – Avatar

4 Answers

29
votes

Your preload-Tag takes the argument "crossorigin", which must be given for Webfonts, even if they are on the same host as your website.

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Preloading_content#Cross-origin_fetches or https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/02/preload-what-is-it-good-for/#early-loading-of-fonts .

22
votes

I kept getting the warning when trying to load preload a google font.

Turns out I was missing the fact that the font was being loaded as a style from google. I solved this by setting the as="style' and then using rel="stylesheet preload prefetch".

See code example below:

<link 
 as="style"
 rel="stylesheet preload prefetch" 
 href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:wght@300;400;500&display=swap" 
 type="text/css" 
 crossorigin="anonymous" />

Happy coding =)

6
votes

Don't know if I am re-opening something that has already been solved here, but I just wanted to mention you need to place the rel="preload" links after the source that loads the fonts, e.g. the CSS file.

6
votes

In my case, changing to rel="stylesheet preload" worked on Chrome -

Here's the bare minimum which WORKED -

<link rel="stylesheet preload" href="path/to/stylesheet" as="style" />

What DID NOT WORK was -

<link rel="preload" href="path/to/stylesheet" as="style" />