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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

#181

Post by zanny »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103
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…

My experience has been web designers are strongly in either the "system fonts are an abomination before God" camp, or the "the user picked the system fonts, lets use those." camp. Oddly pulling them from one camp into the other seems very very difficult.

What happens when a user makes their system font esoteric-new-age-web-sans-font-#523626263278 and your page and the system itself are using the same font?

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

#182

Post by a3n »

rndmize wrote: post #8

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.

I think I've seen play buttons on gifs ...

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

#183

Post by truth_sentinell »

luxpir wrote: post #115
truth_sentinell wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so annoying. Worst thing is that adblocks are not as easily available as in desktops. I'm on windows phone 10, my only browser is Edge, so I'm really fucked.

Set up pihole or similar at home and none of your devices will see ads. It's great fun and makes a nice difference on mobile.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't seem good for me. Blocking things at DNS level, can be counterproductive. Maybe there's a false positive that's been blocked and it will probably a headache to find it.

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

#184

Post by jimmaswell »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #90
smacktoward wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know your fonts are a deliberate design choice, but I'm here for content. Categorizing type as "a design choice" dismisses it as fashion rather than function, which I don't think is the case. Type can put fashion over function, but it can also enhance function by making text more readable, or perform a mix of both functions by expressing a point visually that reinforces the point the page is making textually. It…

> Type can put fashion over function, but it can also enhance function by making text more readable I'm sympathetic to that, but is there really no system font that is sufficiently readable?

The default system fonts are more than good enough for just about any webpage. If Aerial were the only font web browsers were allowed to display, the world would go on just as productively, aside from some designers who conditioned themselves to believe they don't like looking at it getting upset.

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

#185

Post by NumberCruncher »

jamra wrote: post #174
NumberCruncher wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you read my comment? I do not want to be [paste an "indispensable" first world service] proof if I am in a foreign country because it kills the advanture and makes me thinking about fonts and cats.

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

#186

Post by creshal »

vortico wrote: post #171
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.

The downside is that it breaks all the websites using icon fonts.

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

#187

Post by creshal »

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…

> There was at least one HN commenter I've seen that has claimed to just go ahead and install all of Google Fonts locally, which might be a bit extreme, but even automating that isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Arch Linux has a surprisingly popular (top 50) AUR pkgbuild for it: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-google-fonts-git/

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

#188

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

132 column displays were common by the end of the 1970s.

80 column displays date back to the early 1970s.

I started coding on an 80 column display, and I have no doubt at all that a modern 16:9 monitor that can display a double page PDF or a web page with a variety of fonts is a much better display device.

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

#189

Post by glandium »

heywire wrote: post #92
acdha wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with this approach is when you're relying on web fonts for Unicode character ranges which aren't universally supported by your visitors’ OS. A compromise approach which can work nicely is declaring @font-face values using unicode-range to target specific language blocks and then having your font-family be something like 'sans-serif, noto-sans-whatever` so it'll default to a similar system font but load th…

I'm surprised that browser vendors aren't including the more popular fonts.

A font that supports all Unicode is larger than a browser installer.

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

#190

Post by beefsack »

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…

Using system fonts becomes a minefield once you realise they tend to be unique to each platform.
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