Within the framework of light-front field theory, we reassess the electromagnetic form factors of the pion and kaon. Comparison with experiment is made for the full range of momentum transfer, q 2 < 0, including recent data. The light-front model's single regulator mass, mR, of theqq boundstate vertex function is initially adjusted to reproduce the weak decay constants, fπ and fK , and both meson's charge radii, rπ and rK . We study the behavior of these observables under variation of the quark masses and find an optimized parameter set, mu = m d , ms and mR, for which they are in sensibly better agreement with experiment than in a previous analysis; a feature also observed for the elastic form factors, in particular at small q 2 . This model refinement is important in view of an extension to vector and heavy-light mesons.