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.

Answer 2

By default, Font-Squirrel does this in order to increase support with user-agents that do not follow specification (those that ignore font-weight and font-style).

If you do not care about those outdated user-agents, you may enable the "Style Linking" option which is available in the expert section of the @font-face kit generator. Note that IE8 and below ignores numbered font-weight values and only support normal and bold (and corresponding 400, 700 weight values).

Answer 3

It does involve poking around inside the font to determine when a font is bold or italic. And certain bits must be set inside the font in order for IE to pick up the style linking. Most bold / italic fonts have these bits set, but not all. We are working on a way to make this more automatic.

Answer 4

It seems Internet Explorer 8 may be one of those "older" user agents that doesn't support font-weight and font-style

I am trying to make bold/italic/bolditalic automatic using the @font-face and font-family.

My attempts so far have yielded nothing. Here is a page demonstrating the problem.

http://clearimageonline.com/apps/playground/fonts/test_IE.html

Anyone here encountered this and have a solution that works with IE8?

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I have searched and fiddled most of this week for an answer to this. It appears that IE8 wont let me do this.

Here is a proposed workaround (very ugly workaround)....

http://clearimageonline.com/apps/playground/fonts/proposed_IE.html

These test pages are designed for Internet Explorer ONLY. This test is limited to IE. Cross Browser functionality will obviouosly be a part of a final solution.