The unicode-range
CSS descriptor sets the specific range of characters to be used from a font defined by @font-face
and made available for use on the current page. If the page doesn't use any character in this range, the font is not downloaded; if it uses at least one, the whole font is downloaded.
The purpose of this descriptor is to allow the font resources to be segmented so that a browser only needs to download the font resource needed for the text content of a particular page. For example, a site with many localizations could provide separate font resources for English, Greek and Japanese. For users viewing the English version of a page, the font resources for Greek and Japanese fonts wouldn't need to be downloaded, saving bandwidth.
Related at-rule | @font-face |
---|---|
Initial value | U+0-10FFFF |
Media | all |
Computed value | as specified |
Canonical order | order of appearance in the formal grammar of the values |
Syntax
/* <unicode-range> values */ unicode-range: U+26; /* single codepoint */ unicode-range: U+0-7F; unicode-range: U+0025-00FF; /* codepoint range */ unicode-range: U+4??; /* wildcard range */ unicode-range: U+0025-00FF, U+4??; /* multiple values */
Values
- single codepoint
- A single Unicode character code point, for example
U+26
. - codepoint range
- A range of Unicode code points. So for example,
U+0025-00FF
means include all characters in the rangeU+0025
toU+00FF
. - wildcard range
- A range of Unicode code points containing wildcard characters, that is using the
'?'
character, so for exampleU+4??
means include all characters in the rangeU+400
toU+4FF
.
Formal syntax
<unicode-range>#
Examples
We create a simple HTML containing a single <div>
element, including an ampersand, that we want to style with a different font. To make it obvious, we will use a sans-serif font, Helvetica, for the text, and a serif font, Times New Roman, for the ampersand.
<div>Me & You = Us</div>
In the CSS, you can see that we are in effect defining a completely separate @font-face
that only includes a single character in it, meaning that only this character will be styled with this font. We could also have done this by wrapping the ampersand in a <span>
and applying a different font just to that, but that is an extra element and rule set.
@font-face { font-family: 'Ampersand'; src: local('Times New Roman'); unicode-range: U+26; } div { font-size: 4em; font-family: Ampersand, Helvetica, sans-serif; }
Reference result
Live result
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
CSS Fonts Module Level 3 The definition of 'unicode-range' in that specification. |
Candidate Recommendation | Initial definition |
Browser compatibility
Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | Yes | Yes | 36 | 9 | Yes | Yes |
Feature | Android webview | Chrome for Android | Edge mobile | Firefox for Android | IE mobile | Opera Android | iOS Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | ? | ? | Yes | 36 | ? | ? | Yes |