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Web fonts, boy, I don't know

meowni.ca

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Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#3

Post by dom0 »

Animats wrote: post #2

Fonts ought to have Subresource Integrity checksums, and clients should cache them effectively, even cross-site. It's not like they change much.

And then we get cache fingerprinting attacks :)

But then again we already have canvas fingerprinting... why bother with anything else until the browsers fix that?

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#5

Post by sp332 »

Animats wrote: post #2

Fonts ought to have Subresource Integrity checksums, and clients should cache them effectively, even cross-site. It's not like they change much.

Caching doesn't help that much if you're only sending the subset of the font that you're actually using for a given page. I'm not sure the same font gets loaded from different places all that often either.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#6

Post by discreditable »

My feeling on web fonts is that that they can sometimes look nice but aren't worth the page weight. My approach is to pick two fonts I expect MacOS and Windows to have, then fall back to generic. Other times, I'm more lazy and just use the generic.

To put it more bluntly: https://bestmotherfucking.website/#remote-fonts

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#7

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

I have had the exact experience in the last month. Being on a slow connection, I've come to loath web fonts. There is nothing wrong with them in general but it's just that they've come to symbolise over-indulgence and a myopia towards the users actual task-focused needs as opposed to aesthetics.

Part of the issue is dealing with progressive enhancement as far as slow internet connections go. How do you solve that problem? There is no native browser API to my knowledge that does not depend on using JS which isn't ideal imo.

Would love an attribute on script and link tags that could be conditional based on connection speeds.

P.S Would also encourage those who have the choice to use system fonts (https://medium.design/system-shock-6b1dc6d6596f) instead of web fonts. Seems more in-line with the spirit of the web and these fonts are very well tested in general.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#8

Post by rndmize »

For God's sake man, don't leave a huge, fast gif infinitely looping where I can see it while trying to read your blog post. Make it activate after I scroll down to a certain point, or on hover, or anything that doesn't make me feel like I'm trying to read through a strobe light.
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