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Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

practicaltypography.com

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Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#41

Post by logicprog »

mtm7 wrote: post #23

I love a good font (and try to use one on my own blog), but part of me gets really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling. It's like I've found some secret oasis that's going to have a high signal-to-noise ratio, or at least some more "raw" writing than you'd find on ${popularNewsWebsite}. Some sites that come to mind: - https://danluu.com/ - https://100r.co/site/home.html - https://meagher.co/ - https…

I agree with you on the formatting of blogs. For my new philosophy blog[1] I went for hyper-minimal HTML and CSS, statically rendered with Jekyll, no JS at all. As part of that, I had to select a really nice font, since that's basically the only actual styling on the site, so I went for Literara[2], which I recently discovered and am totally enamored with. Besides Bookerly (I have a Kindle), Literata is the hands-down best font I've found for reading on screens.

[1]: http://philosophica.christopherdumas.org [2]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Literata?query=liter

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#42

Post by Isamu »

jakear wrote: post #35
mtm7 wrote: post #23

I love a good font (and try to use one on my own blog), but part of me gets really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling. It's like I've found some secret oasis that's going to have a high signal-to-noise ratio, or at least some more "raw" writing than you'd find on ${popularNewsWebsite}. Some sites that come to mind: - https://danluu.com/ - https://100r.co/site/home.html - https://meagher.co/ - https…

Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail, accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled. HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS. Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so to me the site looks like: Rec…

> HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS

Both pinch-to-zoom and increasing font size work for me in iOS Safari, what zoom are you talking about?

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#43

Post by aasasd »

mtm7 wrote: post #23

I love a good font (and try to use one on my own blog), but part of me gets really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling. It's like I've found some secret oasis that's going to have a high signal-to-noise ratio, or at least some more "raw" writing than you'd find on ${popularNewsWebsite}. Some sites that come to mind: - https://danluu.com/ - https://100r.co/site/home.html - https://meagher.co/ - https…

If you wander a bit through the Practical Typography site, you'll realize that its whole shtick is being minimal while not looking like it was made in '94. Even the ‘Introduction’ chapter says pretty much this.

The somewhat-recent slew of ‘This is a website’ pages don't come close to PT in terms of just being nice to look at.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#44

Post by jakear »

Isamu wrote: post #42
jakear wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail, accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled. HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS. Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so to me the site looks like: Rec…

> HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS Both pinch-to-zoom and increasing font size work for me in iOS Safari, what zoom are you talking about?

Using the font menu in the address bar to change the scaling should increase find size and reflow the text to fit in that size. Currently it just zooms in a. la. pinching. It works correctly on the home page, but not in a comments page.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#45

Post by jakear »

Fiveplus wrote: post #39
jakear wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail, accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled. HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS. Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so to me the site looks like: Rec…

What other parameters should be prioritized while developing websites before compromising accessibility for minimalism?

I’m not sure I understand the question. Are you asking what a designer should consider more important than compromising accessibility for minimalism? Pretty much anything...

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#46

Post by joe5150 »

pvorb wrote: post #15
joe5150 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care for Calibri and I wish Segoe were the default in Word.

Yes! Segoe UI looks brilliant. I'm not sure how it looks on paper, though.

I think it looks pretty good printed.

https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#47

Post by blueridge »

Since we're talking fonts, I'll recommend a few of my favorites, all serifs:

Lyon Text: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/lyon_text

Blanco: https://www.fostertype.com/retail-type/blanco

Bridge Text: https://www.typemates.com/fonts/bridge-text

Arnhem: https://www.typeby.com/fonts/arnhem

Heldane: https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/heldane-text/

Ivar Text: https://lettersfromsweden.se/font/ivar-text/

Gliko Modern: http://r-typography.com/19_gliko-modern/

Rialto Piccolo: https://fontstand.com/fonts/rialto-piccolo-df

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#48

Post by slater »

aasasd wrote: post #34
slater wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verdana

Edit: scratch this, forgot about the ‘HN Enhancement’ extension. I see Helvetica Neue with fallback to Arial, and I checked that it's not my CSS. Verdana is pretty crappy for texts of even a comment length, as it's wide as heck. I have to hack it out with CSS on sites that I use regularly, or the eye gets tired in minutes.

On news.ycombinator.com? It's Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif

https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#49

Post by hocuspocus »

aasasd wrote: post #34
slater wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verdana

Edit: scratch this, forgot about the ‘HN Enhancement’ extension. I see Helvetica Neue with fallback to Arial, and I checked that it's not my CSS. Verdana is pretty crappy for texts of even a comment length, as it's wide as heck. I have to hack it out with CSS on sites that I use regularly, or the eye gets tired in minutes.

    font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#50

Post by joe5150 »

joegahona wrote: post #20
joe5150 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care for Calibri and I wish Segoe were the default in Word.

Do you know if this is available in Google Docs? This is the font Notion uses, and I really like it.

It doesn't appear to be. Microsoft provides an open-source alternative called Selawik which I suppose could in theory be added to Google Fonts and thus become available in Google Docs, but that hasn't happened.
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