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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

#221

Post by codedokode »

I think the easiest solution would be just not to use web fonts at all. Do you need fancy fonts on a website with technical documentation? I think you don't but sadly PHP developers added a whole megabyte of fonts to PHP manual. As a result one has to wait until the fonts are loaded to see the text.

And web fonts are often poorly rendered on Windows.

I want an option in Chromium that would allow disabling web fonts by default and enabling them on a per-site basis (like it has an option for disabling JS). And what surprises me most is that mobile browsers (which are often used on slow and metered connections) do not have such options at all.

I remember old Opera browser that is now long gone had a lot of options to make user experience better on poor connections (and a builtin domain block list). Well, at those times internet users had higher average IQ and now typical Internet user would not even understand what is the meaning of "disable JS".

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

#222

Post by egypturnash »

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.

Because font choice can communicate a lot. Font choice can establish a brand, font choice can create a mood.

Web fonts are better than the stuff people did to do this in the old days. Crazy abominations like siFR [1] or rendering out a gif of your text and using that instead of just delivering some ASCII text that screenreaders can deal with? Web fonts aren't perfect, especially on slow connections, but they're the least horrible solution we have for people who would like to control the finer aesthetic details of how their sites look.

[1] https://mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr

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

#223

Post by jamesdelaneyie »

shash7 wrote: post #200
drinchev wrote: post #41

Badly engineered, multi-purpose WordPress themes are my favorite on that matter. Not only they make you download the entire set of assets ( Think of ~2 icon fonts, half a megabyte stylesheets, megabytes of JS and on top of that 5$ DO box serving all the PHP `magic` ), but also include some entrance animations, which take additional time, before you focus on the content. Actually this reminds me of the IoT DDoS attack…

Most of these are premade themes from themeforest or other similar marketplaces. The devs have no incentive to optimize their themes as they are usually bought by non-tech people and they don't know how adding five different fonts in their website makes it really hard to load and render.

This is true, they don't understand how 5+ fonts make it hard to load and render. But they do care about bandied about stats like 83% of people will leave a site if it doesn't load in -0.3 milliseconds.

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

#224

Post by ENGNR »

odbol_ wrote: post #192
cperciva wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Why aren't you using Reddit Sync yet? Who uses the mobile site these days anyway?

For me it's about tabs. Can't stand when an app opens a URL in a mini browser inside itself. If it's a web link just open it in the damn browser!

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

#225

Post by forrestthewoods »

Retra wrote: post #211
forrestthewoods wrote: post #60

All web developers should be forced to spend a full week using their site on each of LTE, 3g, and 2g. If your website takes more than 10 seconds to load on an ad-block free LTE device you're fired. Relevant: Page Weight Matters (2012) http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

There is absolutely nothing forcing people to use the internet through their phones, so I see no reason to force developers to optimize for it. Some people eat their food through a tube, but you wouldn't force every cook to prepare all of their food to be eaten through a straw. And there you at least have a moral argument.

Yes. Why would developers optimize for the platform that the majority of users use? Truly a question for the ages.

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

#226

Post by stomato »

codedokode wrote: post #221

I think the easiest solution would be just not to use web fonts at all. Do you need fancy fonts on a website with technical documentation? I think you don't but sadly PHP developers added a whole megabyte of fonts to PHP manual. As a result one has to wait until the fonts are loaded to see the text. And web fonts are often poorly rendered on Windows. I want an option in Chromium that would allow disabling web fonts b…

> I think the easiest solution would be just not to use web fonts at all.

Here's another option: plain text.

That's right. You can have webpages that are plain text without any HTML formatting, and they will render.

Here is an example file:

  This is text.
This is the absolute best way of presenting web content. No one will complain.

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

#227

Post by erikpukinskis »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #194
erikpukinskis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because a vanishingly small percentage of designers have truly, in their heart, accepted the web as a medium. They'll sit lovingly with a bunch of dinged up old lead typesetting tools, positively jizz over imperfections in ink distribution, but try to talk to them about system fonts, box models, or free phones and their eyes glaze over and they drift off into their color calibrated RAW dreamland. In schools t…

This is a completely unrealistic view of how designers work. I've yet to meet a web designer who would have the first clue what to do with hot metal. There are some old guys who remember physical typesetting for print, but design has been primarily electronic for around twenty years now. The history of the web started after most print had already moved to digital fonts and layout with Pagemaker, then Quark Xpress. It…

That's exactly my point. You are unwilling to accept the properties of your medium. You just say "it sucks" and fight with it. You're like an acrylic painter who complains that oil dries slowly and keeps designing for acrylics, and everything comes out smudgy.

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

#228

Post by wallacoloo »

mcbits wrote: post #218
kutkloon7 wrote: post #202

I absolutely do not understand the need for 'web fonts'. Just specify a normal font that most users already have installed in CSS, with some fallbacks. 'Progressive styling' is way more annoying (in my humble opinion) than waiting some time. Pages like the verge can take minutes anyway, when the wifi is not optimal. When you do things progressively, the page just keeps on changing, and the page can't really be used.…

The shifting page layout is a symptom of a broader problem, in that it's impossible to accurately predict or specify the rendered dimensions of text. Even measuring a container after the fact is unreliable because of the arbitrary amount of whitespace in different fonts. You'd have to generate a bitmap image and detect a bounding box around the pixels, which definitely won't help with loading times. This can't be don…

Seems like it could at least be mitigated on the browser's side though: "This text was at the top of the viewport before the restyling, so let's scroll the document to the point where that text still appears at the top."

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

#229

Post by phkahler »

egypturnash wrote: post #222
phkahler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Because font choice can communicate a lot. Font choice can establish a brand, font choice can create a mood. Web fonts are better than the stuff people did to do this in the old days. Crazy abominations like siFR [1] or rendering out a gif of your text and using that instead of just delivering some ASCII text that screenreaders can deal with? Web fonts aren't perfect, especially on slow connections, but they're the l…

Come to think of it, browsers could have a mode where they use only installed fonts regardless of what a site says. This would be useful to the people on slow connections.

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

#230

Post by phkahler »

paulddraper wrote: post #132
phkahler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Usually, it's done for consistent layout. (Many people in this thread have said they do not value consistent layout. Nor do I, but that is the usual reason.)

The whole point of HTML was that the layout was done by the browser to fit the users screen. If your site is fixed width, you're doing it wrong. And I realize that a lot of places are doing it wrong.
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