Why not define font-weight or font-style in @font-face, Font Squirrel?

Question

When we define @font-face styles, we can define whether the referenced files are for the bold, italic, or bold italic versions of a font, as discussed in this SO question:

Answer 1

The problem using the default FontSquirrel's approach is that if the fallback font loads, all weights will be lost because they are all set to normal. I think the style linking is the best approach.

If you are worried about IE8 users you can use a conditional css.