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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

#171

Post by vortico »

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…

I keep external fonts disabled on my laptop with Firefox. Under Preferences > Content > Advanced, uncheck "Allow Pages to User Their Own Fonts", and it makes the web seemingly twice as fast.

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #161
jamra wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit off with your comment. Having a web connection makes traveling much nicer. The authors mistake was not pre purchasing a data sim with a fast connection. Amateur traveler complaining about nonsense

The next time I pick up a chick I chatted up on a trip and I can't find back to my b'n'b because we both are so wasted and I don't have internet connection to use google maps I hope you will be there. At first to be able to use your 4G phone and at second to prove you how wrong you are.

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by jamra »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #161
jamra wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit off with your comment. Having a web connection makes traveling much nicer. The authors mistake was not pre purchasing a data sim with a fast connection. Amateur traveler complaining about nonsense

The next time I pick up a chick I chatted up on a trip and I can't find back to my b'n'b because we both are so wasted and I don't have internet connection to use google maps I hope you will be there. At first to be able to use your 4G phone and at second to prove you how wrong you are.

Did you read my comment? Get a data plan before you travel and you'll be slow internet proof.

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

#174

Post by jamra »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #161
jamra wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are a bit off with your comment. Having a web connection makes traveling much nicer. The authors mistake was not pre purchasing a data sim with a fast connection. Amateur traveler complaining about nonsense

The next time I pick up a chick I chatted up on a trip and I can't find back to my b'n'b because we both are so wasted and I don't have internet connection to use google maps I hope you will be there. At first to be able to use your 4G phone and at second to prove you how wrong you are.

Did you read my comment? Get a data plan before you travel and you'll be slow internet proof.

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

#175

Post by Gruselbauer »

zzzcpan wrote: post #153
zeveb wrote: post #146

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. 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.

Isn't it more so it is readable inside a phone display to an ssh session as well as a fat 4K screen? That's my reason at least. Can always scale up something, but line breaks I didn't make myself make me want to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of a demonic deity taking the earthly form of a little girl. Or, you know, angry.

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

#176

Post by ge96 »

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.

Member when YouTube used to do that with search results except it was an ad

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

#177

Post by mgkimsal »

phkahler wrote: post #117
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…

>> they've come to symbolise over-indulgence Yes! Why should a web site specify fonts at all? The user should set their browser to a default that they like and most sites should be happy with that. People just use web fonts because they can. If there's a particular reason you need to override the users preference then fine.

> The user should set their browser to a default that they like

If this was actually a decent part of a browser's configuration UI, it might have caught on (or... still might). Give people tools to manage this easily, and they may choose to do it - the 'reader mode' in some browsers shows some people want to get at content regardless of fonts, and giving them easier and more 'up-front' ways of managing this would bring the issue front and center.

Why did we end up with legislation about cookies? I think, in part, it's because it was essentially black magic for years, hidden in layers of nested "advanced" menus, instead of a button right in the damn menu bar saying "clear cookies".

"Why doesn't anyone use personal certificates?!" (I hear from tech colleagues now and then) - because the UI/management for it is horribly useless for 99% of people.

Same with this font stuff. Put "font choice" front and center, as part of browser setup - don't hide it behind layers of "accessibility" stuff. Give people some standard themes they can switch between easily - high contrast, B&W, etc - and have it be something that's a button press away (harder to do on mobile, I'd think).

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

#178

Post by swiley »

elcapitan wrote: post #27

Are there actually font blockers like ad blockers? That would solve the problem pretty easily for everybody who's annoyed. Although they probably won't be available for mobile browsers, where it's the most painful.

You can disable custom fonts in most browsers. I've had them disabled for years in firefox. My only complaint is that occasionally some sites use custom fonts as icons (why!?) for buttons. (microsoft in particular loves this)

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

#179

Post by BinaryIdiot »

tyingq wrote: post #44
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize sometimes it's okay to have a page larger than, say, 50kb. Right? The gifs were a great way to show the exact issues she was discussing and they take up the bulk of that space. So why is that a bad thing in any way? Yes web pages should, ideally , be small but that doesn't mean the media they show to the user has to be small as well.

>You do realize sometimes it's okay to have a page larger than, say, 50kb. Right? 50KB isn't anywhere near 1.2MB. Did you mean 500KB? The blog post specifically mentioned an experience on a 2g connection, and the bloat associated with webfonts. Webfonts seem to typically be in the 50KB - 150KB range. I just find it ironic to complain about bloat from one type of artifact, in a blog post that uses even larger artifact…

> 50KB isn't anywhere near 1.2MB. Did you mean 500KB?

It was a random number less than 1.2MB. So no I did not mean 500KB. In fact without media 50KB is a little site for a site IMO.

> The blog post specifically mentioned an experience on a 2g connection, and the bloat associated with webfonts.

Correct but media is always large. That's like YouTube having a blinking font issue so they fix it but people complain that the videos are still large.

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

#180

Post by Nadya »

scholia wrote: post #168
Nadya wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't alone and some go even further! I make my own "enhancement suite" for any website I frequent. I blacklist all Javascript by default and whitelist only Javascript necessary for things to function. I use Greasemonkey to add my own functionality to a page, sometimes blacklisting the "default" functionality and rolling my own code to replace it in a more "me-friendly" way. And finally, Stylish, so that I can c…

Would it be feasible to have an "enhancement pack" website where less talented people (ie me) could get fixes like this. I remember doing stuff like this with Proxomitron in the good old days....

>Would it be feasible to have an "enhancement pack" website where less talented people (ie me) could get fixes like this.

Sort of? At least if I'm understanding you properly. :)

It used to be that userscripts.org was a thing. Now I think you need to use a mirror [0]. There is also a subreddit for them [1]. Stylish should have a similar site for themes - although not all userscripts will work properly with Stylish (styles may break functionality that relies on styles being a certain way).

For a few sites, I think people have made "generators" for stylesheets to make it user-friendly to generate your own userstyle. I'm not aware of any offhand though.

It would be nice to have a more "curated" or organized Userscripts site, since not all of them are site-specific.

The two most popular "enhancement suites" are the Youtube Enhancement Suite and the Reddit Enhancement Suite, both of which do countless things and are extremely "heavyweight" in functionality/features. My personal "enhancement suites" are a lot smaller in scale and public usability. :)

[0] https://userscripts-mirror.org/

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/userscripts/

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