Google Webfonts For Woo Framework

Description

The purpose of this plugin is to make all available Google webfonts available to the WooThemes Canvas theme,
and any other themes that use the WooThemes framework. It also allows additional selected international subsets
(Greek, Cyrillic, Vietnamese etc.) to loaded, which the Woo Framework does not support at present.

It works like this:

1. You install the plugin. It contains a key that is used to access the Google Webfonts API.
2. The API is used to download the full list of Google web fonts in the Settings page. This is cached locally, and will only be refreshed when you save the plugin settings page.
3. The full list of fonts and all variants replaces the list that the Woo framework defines internally.

What you should then see, is the ability to select any available Google web font in the WooThemes theme administration pages,
and have those fonts displayed in your theme.

In previous versions, you had to register for a Google API key. You no longer have to do this, as the plugin
has a shared API key built-in. You can still use your own, but if you don’t, then the shared key will be
set when activating the plugin.

If an invalid API key is used, this plugin has a fallback list of fonts, so you can try it out without an API key,
and that might even be good enough for your purposes.

In addition, you can select the weights that will be downloaded. If you only use light/regular/bold (300/400/700) then
there is no point requesting all the additional weights from some of the fonts that are more complete, but
consequently are a very heavy download. This plugin will help to keep the bandwidth down, and so the load speed higher.

This plugin has been tested against PHP5.3 and the project repository is here:

https://github.com/academe/google-webfonts-for-woo-framework/

Changes have been made so that it works with PHP5.2 and has been reported as working.
However, I work under at least 5.3 so some incompatibilities may creep in by accident from time-to-time – just report them and I will do my best to fix as quickly as possible.

Please let me know how this plugin works for you, whether you like it, and how it can be improved.

Installation

1. Upload google-fonts-for-woo-framework/ to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory or google-fonts-for-woo-framework.zip through the “Add Plugins” administration page.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Your WooThemes theme will now offer the full list of Google Webfonts in its various dropdown lists of fonts.

FAQ

Installation Instructions

1. Upload google-fonts-for-woo-framework/ to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory or google-fonts-for-woo-framework.zip through the “Add Plugins” administration page.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Your WooThemes theme will now offer the full list of Google Webfonts in its various dropdown lists of fonts.

How can I contribute to this plugin?

This plugin is managed on github here https://github.com/academe/google-webfonts-for-woo-framework
Feel free to raise issues there and make pull requests, as well as in the normal way on www.ads-software.com

I see errors reported when fetching the new Google webfonts

Some hosts may not be set up to allow your site to fetch data from remote sites. Please report any
such errors on the plugin page or github, and we will try looking for a workaround.

Can I use the new fonts in a page body?

Yes, you can. WooThemes themes provides a short-code tag that allows you to embed any font in the body of a page or post.
However, the list of fonts that the short-code quick-create function that the content editor provides, will not
include the full list of fonts. To work around this, just select any random font to create a short-code tag,
then change the name of the font manually in that tag. The theme will load that font automatically when you display
the page or post.

Tell me about variants. What are they?

Many Google Webfonts come with variants, and these are listed against each font in the plugin settings page.
A variant is another version font from the same font family, that is used for displaying a different style
or weight. Where a variant does not exist, for example if there is no “italic” variant, the web browser will
fake it and make a best guess of what it would look like. This is not ideal from a design perspective.
So where possible, use fonts that have variants listed that cover the styles and weights that you want to use
in your design. That way you will get a font that has been carefully designed for that purpose.

The settings page allows you to preview specific variants of each font, as well as the standard core font
(generally normal/non-italic, and regular/400-weight).

Is it just Google Webfonts?

For now, yes it is. The Woo Framework is designed to pull in external webfonts from Google only at present.

There are plans to extend this to other sources of web-based fonts, with the risk that it may be a little
ess robust when it comes to theme updates from WooThemes. However, that will likely be a separate plugin;
this plugin will continue to support just Google Webfonts.

How can I get a list of Google fonts this plugin recognises?

If you do not supply a valid API key, this plugin will fall back to the fonts listed in fonts.json
To get an updated list of fonts for that file, make sure you have a valid API key then add this
parameter to the end of the settings page for this plugin:

export=1

Your URL will look like this:

https://yoursite.example.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=gw-for-wooframework&export=1

This will then list all the fonts and their variants downloaded from the Google API in the same
format that fonts.json uses. There is no API at this time for fetching the subsets (latin, greek etc) or font
classes (serif, sans serif, handwriting, etc), so that information is not included. However, if you are
interested in those details, I’m trying to keep an updated list here:

https://github.com/academe/GoogleFontMetadata

What is the font weight selection all about?

In the settings page, you can select a filter for the font weights. By selecting weights, only those weights
will be requested from Google.

What happens, is that when you request a font from Google, it is delivered with all the weights that it
supports. Those weights may include ultra-bold, ultra-light, semi-bold and so on, as well as the standard
light/normal/bold (also known as 300, 400 and 700). Each of these weights adds to the download payload
and that can be excessive for some fonts, especially for users on slow or expensive connections.

By filtering the weights – by default just asking for 300/400/700 – the fonts downloaded from Google can
be much smaller. WooThemes themes only support these three weights in the theme administration pages, so
this is why we only request these three by default. If you have extended the theme and require additional
weights, then select the weights that you would like included in the settings page. Those weights will
then be requested for all all fonts used from Google, but only where Google offers those weights.

Selecting a weight, or not selecting it, will not change the weights your browser will attempt to display.
What it changes is the glyphs for the exact weights that are requested from Google. It is a performance
enhancement; don’t download what is not needed.

Help – I’ve messed up the API key and now it won’t work

You can reset the key by blanking it out on the settings page. By deactivating and reactivating the plugin,
the default shared key will be added back in.

Reviews

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Contributors & Developers

Changelog

Version 1.6.4

• Fix broken preview on SSL site.
• Added new fall-back fonts. 818 font families supported.
• Tested to WP 4.7.4 Woo framework 6.2.8 and Woo Canvas 5.11.4
• Switched to a new API key under a new Google project.

Version 1.6.3

• Added previews for Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil and Thai.
• Additional fallback font families. 732 font families supported.

Version 1.6.2

• Added previews for Arabic and Hebrew
• Additional fallback font families. 709 font families supported.

Version 1.6.1

• Add previews for subsets Devanagari and Telugu.
• Additional ten fallback font families. 692 font families supported.

Version 1.6.0

• git issue #29: Set the default API key if saved blanked out.
• git issue #27: Use the new fonts filter for Woo Framework 6.0+ see https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/some-fonts-not-displaying-ex-source-serif-pro
• New fallback font families (682): Dhurjati, Gidugu, Mallanna, Mandali, NTR, Ramabhadra

Version 1.5.2

• Update the API key on plugin update (the activation hook is no longer run, which I kind of missed).

Version 1.5.0

• Now defaults to shared browser API key. You can still use your own if you wish.

Version 1.4.6

• New fallback font families (676): “Halant”, “Hind”, “Kalam”, “Karma”, “Khand”, “Laila”, “Rajdhani”, “Rozha One”, “Sarpanch”, “Slabo 13px”, “Slabo 27px”, “Teko”, “Vesper Libre”
• New weights for font families: Glegoo

Version 1.4.5

• New fallback font families (663): “Ek Mukta”, “Fira Mono”, “Fira Sans”, “Rubik Mono One”, “Rubik One”, “Source Serif Pro”

Version 1.4.4

• Tested against WP3.9 and Woo Framework 5.5.5

Version 1.4.3

• Ticket #23 escape pipes/bars (|) in Google URL. Thanks github.com/rollbackfp

Version 1.4.2

• Some more informative error messages when not using WooThemes or not having an API key.

Version 1.4.1

• Filter out weights that have not been selected in the admin page, to reduce bandwidth.
• Display additional error details when the API cannot be accessed.

Version 1.3.4

• Updated URL and instructions for the Google webfonts console (to get an API key).

Version 1.3.3

• New fonts in fallback list: Alegreya Sans, Alegreya Sans SC, Exo 2, Kantumruy, Kdam Thmor plus “normal” weight for Sniglet.

Version 1.3.2

• An official release of 1.3.1 with some minor text amendments.

Version 1.3.1 (beta)

• Support Google’s international subsets. Select which subsets you want to load for all used fonts.

Version 1.2.3

• Check for missing object during activation, to skip warning.

Version 1.2.2

• Fixed bug that caused failure in fallback fonts to load.

Version 1.2.1

• Version tags corrected, but otherwise same as 1.2.0

Version 1.2.0

• Introduction of fallback list of fonts when Google cannot be contacted for any reason.
• Cache is now indefinite; it is refreshed only when saving the settings page.
• The list of fonts from Google completely replaces the list in the Woo Framework, rather than merging in.
• The font list shown on the settings page shows the available variants more clearly.
• The font preview function supports italic style and the main font weights (nine weights from 100 to 900).

Version 1.1.0

• Reports errors fetching Google fonts.
• Updates the built-in framework fonts with new variations, improving quality of displayed fonts.

Version 1.0.0

• i18n complete.
• Show fonts used by the theme as selected in admin page.
• Split admin functions into a separate script and class.
• Ability to preview fonts.