Edge Inspect Won't Display Typekit Fonts over Local IP

JAN 28, 2014  |  05:17PM EST

Hi Dennis,

Here is the information from one of our engineers on using Edge Inspect and Typekit:

"Unfortunately it seems you've run into a situation where Edge Inspect and Typekit don't integrate very well. I'll explain a bit more, then offer some suggestions to work around the issue.

When you're browsing a local website via the hostname `localhost`, which would not be accessible to any other devices on your network, Edge Inspect automatically gets your machine's local IP address (which is not the same as the external IP as shown on sites like whatismyip.com) and sends that to the mobile apps. For instance, let's say I have a Sinatra application running in Chrome on my Mac as http://localhost:4567. My iPhone wouldn't be able to understand the hostname "localhost", but it can see my Mac using its IP address 10.1.10.1, so Edge Inspect will navigate to http://10.1.10.1:4567.

So, to get fonts working, you could add both `localhost` and `10.1.10.1` to your kit. However, we don't recommend adding local IPs to kits because they tend to change without warning. (In my example above, the next time I turn on my computer its IP could have changed to 10.1.10.2, but all I would know is that fonts had stopped working on my devices again.)

To work around this, we recommend using some form of "dynamic DNS" — basically, a domain name that is automatically updated with your current IP and therefore will always point to your computer.

If you're using a Mac, the simplest thing would be to use your Mac's Bonjour hostname. Bonjour is a technology built into Mac OS X and iOS to help devices find each other automatically over networks.

To find your Bonjour hostname:

1. Open System Preferences on your Mac.
2. Choose the Sharing icon.
3. Your Bonjour hostname will be displayed in the top area, under the "Computer Name" field.

You can add the hostname that appears there to your kit, and use it on any Apple device on your network. For example, my Bonjour name is My-MBP.local, so I can browse to http://My-MBP.local:4567 on any Mac or iOS device and see my Sinatra app.

Unfortunately, this simple solution will only work on Apple devices or Windows PCs with Apple's Bonjour software installed — you can't use this hostname with Android phones or tablets. If you need a hostname that will work on any device, there are a couple of options I'd recommend:

1. A third-party service called Forward offers a way to easily forward ports from your computer to other devices anywhere on the internet. You can learn more about them and sign up for a 30-day trial here: https://forwardhq.com. Forward will give you a permanent domain name for your forwarded app that you can add to your kit, such as `dev-yourcompany.fwd.wf`.

2. 37signals has a free "wildcard DNS" service called xip.io that will automatically forward traffic to a local IP address. You can get your current local IP address by opening System Preferences, then choosing Network. The IP address should be shown in the small text underneath the connection status for whatever connection is active (i.e. has a green dot next to it). Once you have the IP, you can access your computer at [YOUR IP].xip.io. To get fonts working, add *.xip.io to your kit. Remember that your IP may change, so if your site stops being accessible you should check to make sure you have the correct IP address.

I personally use xip.io if I need to test Typekit on multiple devices using Edge Inspect. It's certainly not the easiest option to use, but it works quite well with almost no setup and it's free.

We're going to work to make the experience using Typekit and Edge Inspect together better in the future, but hopefully these suggestions will help you out for now."

I hope that this helps; let me know if you have any other questions on this!
-- liz

JAN 28, 2014  |  04:25PM EST
Original message