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Web fonts, boy, I don't know

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

#151

Post by angry-hacker »

Declanomous wrote: post #28
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #7

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 pro…

As much as I believe font matters, I really think people should just use system fonts in general. No content is definitely more annoying than ugly content, but I have a seething hatred for webpages who jump around as content loads. "Let's click on this link... ah, not that link, let's go back. Yes, this link... NO! STOP MOVING!" Besides, I'm used to my fonts. I know your fonts are a deliberate design choice, but I'm…

You can async your fonts and fallback. The jumping issue still remains. You can have similar line height and font word / letter width to jump less.

Mozilla has something called font height (?) that should help too. But it's Mozilla only.

The jumping task is for browser vendors to fix. Chrome already has an experimental flag to remember position.

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

#152

Post by scotth »

jajern wrote: post #101
WorldMaker wrote: post #71

I've been slowly adding the contents of Google Fonts into my system fonts storage as I see them used on sites that I visit often. Things like Open Sans and Roboto for instance are quite common. I think there would probably be a good case for an extension to automate that in some fashion for fonts with known open licenses (essentially anything from Google Fonts, for example) to go ahead and just install them into the…

If someone uses the Google CDN to load the font does the browser/website even look to see if the font is loaded on your local computer?

It does if the @font-face rule specifies a local() src.

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

#153

Post by zzzcpan »

zeveb wrote: post #146
hyperpape wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. As a profession, we can't complain that someone might be bothered by the idea of word-wrapping.

> Many people in our profession write code that's less that 80 characters per line because that's how much you could display on terminals in the 70s. It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row. There's nothing wrong with that.

> It's _also_ a very reasonable & readable amount of text in a row

Presumably, that's why they used 80 characters in the first place, as anything more is too hard to read.

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

#154

Post by WorldMaker »

Klathmon wrote: post #127
WorldMaker wrote: post #71

I've been slowly adding the contents of Google Fonts into my system fonts storage as I see them used on sites that I visit often. Things like Open Sans and Roboto for instance are quite common. I think there would probably be a good case for an extension to automate that in some fashion for fonts with known open licenses (essentially anything from Google Fonts, for example) to go ahead and just install them into the…

You might not care, but as an FYI that can be used to fingerprint your browser more accurately. And if you are a developer, make sure you correctly test your site on machines that DO NOT have the fonts installed, as the browser won't even try to load them if it already has them, and you'll likely never find any bugs related to that until it's too late.

Those are fair points. Probably my ideal solution would involve an LRU cache (and not installing it on development machines and/or easy to spin up fresh VMs for load testing).

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

#155

Post by WorldMaker »

jajern wrote: post #101
WorldMaker wrote: post #71

I've been slowly adding the contents of Google Fonts into my system fonts storage as I see them used on sites that I visit often. Things like Open Sans and Roboto for instance are quite common. I think there would probably be a good case for an extension to automate that in some fashion for fonts with known open licenses (essentially anything from Google Fonts, for example) to go ahead and just install them into the…

If someone uses the Google CDN to load the font does the browser/website even look to see if the font is loaded on your local computer?

Browsers try to load local fonts before remote fonts. At least anecdotally I've never seen a Google Font/Google CDN font bypass a local font, at least not with the default Google Fonts CSS code.

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

#156

Post by extra88 »

strainer wrote: post #134
mlinksva wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More sites should switch from webfonts to svg for navigation https://github.com/blog/2112-delivering-octicons-with-svg / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11154834

I hadn't noticed github switched, I thought svg might be a bit heavier but they say pageload time hasnt suffered and rendering 'jank' improved. Github were using correct ranges for their octicons at least. iirc there is a common software named 'fontawesome' which has caused trouble by creating custom webfonts with incorrect character ranges.

Font Awesome [0] is more of a service than software. Yes, if a site is using icon fonts, more likely than not they're using Font Awesome's (telltale "fa-" names in the source). They're adding a "pro" level that offers SVG as an option.

[0] http://fontawesome.io

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

#157

Post by angry-hacker »

niftich wrote: post #107

The gripes are valid and some of the links about fixing it are good content. I'm starting to sound old, but "back in my day" people would use the 'media' parameter in link tags to load mobile-specific stylesheets. Has this practice died out? If so, why?

You can do it but designers want consistency on every device pixel perfect bla bla. All major OS providers should included in all the Google fonts by default and we can move on with our lives.

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

#158

Post by angry-hacker »

Freak_NL wrote: post #123
hpaavola wrote: post #85

What fonts are available in recent versions of all major operating systems? So what are the "web safe" fonts of 2016?

There are no more guarantees about which font is installed, although you will probably get a decent match if you use one of the old Microsoft core fonts (Verdana, Times New Roman, etc.). Just don't expect the exact font; often you will get a font that matches the metrics for the one you've chosen as a fall-back for those (once) popular fonts. In any case, you can always safely specify one of these font groups: sans-s…

You do get fallback but might experience FOIT and other nasty things.

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

#159

Post by chipotle_coyote »

jajern wrote: post #101
WorldMaker wrote: post #71

I've been slowly adding the contents of Google Fonts into my system fonts storage as I see them used on sites that I visit often. Things like Open Sans and Roboto for instance are quite common. I think there would probably be a good case for an extension to automate that in some fashion for fonts with known open licenses (essentially anything from Google Fonts, for example) to go ahead and just install them into the…

If someone uses the Google CDN to load the font does the browser/website even look to see if the font is loaded on your local computer?

Assuming they're using pure CSS for the font loading (which is standard for Google's CDN), yes, the browser will use a local copy in preference. (There's a way to disable that in CSS's font spec, although it's hard to think of a good use for that.)

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

#160

Post by wfunction »

cperciva wrote: post #49
Declanomous wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I believe font matters, I really think people should just use system fonts in general. No content is definitely more annoying than ugly content, but I have a seething hatred for webpages who jump around as content loads. "Let's click on this link... ah, not that link, let's go back. Yes, this link... NO! STOP MOVING!" Besides, I'm used to my fonts. I know your fonts are a deliberate design choice, but I'm…

"Let's click on this link... ah, not that link, let's go back. Yes, this link... NO! STOP MOVING!" This is my #1 complaint about reddit. Not due to fonts; but rather when I load reddit on my phone, a "get the reddit app" banner appears... timed perfectly so that my attempt to view my messages sends me off to the app store.

Same thing with the Facebook app; whenever you're searching for something, it shows the result you want, but then like 0.5-1 second later it pops up a different result above it so you tap the wrong thing. Drives me insane.
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