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Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

fontgenerator.design

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Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#61

Post by ghusbands »

yarlinghe wrote: post #31
chrismorgan wrote: post #23

> Use an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code. Please no: just write the character. need to be encoded; a few others have arguable benefit to being encoded (most notably NO-BREAK SPACE), but most Unicode characters should just be put in literally. The days when you couldn’t be confident of the file encoding are past: your HTML is being served as UTF-8 (or in the rare case it isn’t, you should fix that instead o…

Yep — fully agree. For modern HTML/CSS/JS, you should just write the character and serve UTF-8. The entities / codes are there purely as reference for legacy cases, debugging, or when you only have a code point and no rendered glyph — not as a recommendation for normal authoring.

Your site still says "HOW TO ADD ALMOST EQUAL TO IN HTML? Use an HTML entity, a decimal code, or a hex code."

That is incorrect. As you say, you should just write the character in your HTML and ensure it's served with the correct encoding. If it's just for legacy cases, debugging or such, say so on the site.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#62

Post by Fileformat »

catoc wrote: post #57
Fileformat wrote: post #38

I run a couple similar sites: FileFormat.Info[1] has a page per codepoint. It has been around awhile, so the UI isn't as whizzy, but it has all the data and works w/o JavaScript UnicodeSearch[2] is an updated search UI that uses JavaScript and the excellent Tabulator grid widget. There are actually a ton of similar sites with a page-per-codepoint. It is all fun to make one, until the bots come along and hammer every…

1. Enthusiastically try fileformat.info 2. “141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s) want to track you” 3. Exit :-(

I get where you are coming from, and have put some thought into it.

I built the site over 20 years ago, and while it was fun to make, I wouldn't have maintained it this long if is was costing me every month.

I've tried to minimize the intrusiveness: I disabled the pop-up and interstitial ads and I don't serve anything different to people with ad-blockers. And I've stuck with Google Adwords, despite requests from all sorts of questionable alternatives.

I'm not sure about the future: bots are causing all sorts of trouble, and the ad revenue is trending down and is now less than break even.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#63

Post by catoc »

Fileformat wrote: post #62
catoc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Enthusiastically try fileformat.info 2. “141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s) want to track you” 3. Exit :-(

I get where you are coming from, and have put some thought into it. I built the site over 20 years ago, and while it was fun to make, I wouldn't have maintained it this long if is was costing me every month. I've tried to minimize the intrusiveness: I disabled the pop-up and interstitial ads and I don't serve anything different to people with ad-blockers. And I've stuck with Google Adwords, despite requests from all…

I’m glad to hear it’s helping you keep the costs down - that’s positive. It’s the type of popup that triggers my allergy - which as allergies go is mostly my problem.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#64

Post by stack_framer »

It doesn't fit my definition of "clean" at all, but that's a subjective word anyway. I do have some feedback (unrelated to being clean):

- The search field is arguably the most important element on the site. It might benefit from a magnifying glass icon and/or some visual distinctions that make it actually look like a text input for searching. It's thick border and shadow make it look like all the other boxes on the page that have thick borders and shadows!

- Speaking of the search field, it would be really nice if it supported fuzzy search. For example, I searched for "greater than" and got no results. I had to search for "greater-than" (with a dash) to find the math symbols (like ≥).

- The small font size of the symbols makes them really hard to see for old people like me who are pretending not to be old.

- Ditch the analytics and cookie consent nonsense. These are anti-developer!

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#65

Post by opello »

darrenf wrote: post #39
Fileformat wrote: post #38

I run a couple similar sites: FileFormat.Info[1] has a page per codepoint. It has been around awhile, so the UI isn't as whizzy, but it has all the data and works w/o JavaScript UnicodeSearch[2] is an updated search UI that uses JavaScript and the excellent Tabulator grid widget. There are actually a ton of similar sites with a page-per-codepoint. It is all fun to make one, until the bots come along and hammer every…

Long time fileformat.info user. here, just wanted to say thanks -- always found it incredibly useful for this exact purpose.

Same here, it is a tool that I reach for infrequently but when I need it it's always proven invaluable.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#67

Post by BrouteMinou »

Why do I get a spinning "waiting" on every page? That doesn't seem "clean" to me... That's supposed to be raw HTML with a search.

It's cluttered with how to put your HTML character in your HTML, while being supposedly focused for devs...

All that doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#68

Post by abeyer »

You say "for every unicode symbol", which I guess is true if you search by code, but for anything that isn't in your curated set I'm unable to even find it if I paste the literal character or use the "official" name.

eg ℝ "Double-Struck Capital R" won't show up at all unless I search it as U+211D.

Re: Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol

#69

Post by johnnyfived »

rsync wrote: post #59

Clean ? - Gratuitous, unnecessary cookies (and accompanying cookie consent dialog) - cloudflare insights built into the pages - non-zero counter in ublock origin That's before we even get to the page source which contains, among other things: "text\":\"First, ensure you're using a modern browser. If problems persist, try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache. Some older devices may have limited font supp…

Not super against cookie tracking or consent especially for a free platform, but these extreme color contrasts don't even seem to have any obvious correlations. Is it done just for looks? That's a crazy decision for a font information site
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