Why is @font-face throwing a 404 error on woff files?

Question

I'm using @font-face on my company's site and it works/looks great. Except Firefox and Chrome will throw a 404 error on the .woff file. IE does not throw the error. I have the fonts located at the root but I've tried with the fonts in the css folder and even giving the entire url for the font. If remove those fonts from my css file I don't get a 404 so I know it's not a syntax error.

Also, I used fontsquirrels tool to create the @font-face fonts and code:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'LaurenCBrownRegular';
  src: url('/laurencb-webfont.eot');
  src: local('☺'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.woff') format('woff'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), 
    url('/laurencb-webfont.svg#webfontaaFhOfws') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: 'FontinSansRegular';
  src: url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.eot');
  src: local('☺'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.woff') format('woff'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'), 
    url('/fontin_sans_r_45b-webfont.svg#webfontKJHTwWCi') format('svg');
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

Answer 1

I was experiencing this same symptom - 404 on woff files in Chrome - and was running an application on a Windows Server with IIS 6.

If you are in the same situation you can fix it by doing the following:

Solution 1

"Simply add the following MIME type declarations via IIS Manager (HTTP Headers tab of website properties): .woff application/x-woff"

Update: according to MIME Types for woff fonts and Grsmto the actual MIME type is application/x-font-woff (for Chrome at least). x-woff will fix Chrome 404s, x-font-woff will fix Chrome warnings.

As of 2017: Woff fonts have now been standardised as part of the RFC8081 specification to the mime type font/woff and font/woff2.

Thanks to Seb Duggan: http://sebduggan.com/posts/serving-web-fonts-from-iis

Solution 2

You can also add the MIME types in the web config:

  <system.webServer>
    <staticContent>
      <remove fileExtension=".woff" /> <!-- In case IIS already has this mime type -->
      <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="font/woff" />
    </staticContent>    
  </system.webServer>