Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

practicaltypography.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 146 posts

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

#91

Post by basch »

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…

A couple other designs I love.

https://lucumr.pocoo.org

https://http2.info

https://dwell.com (not text only but good use of imagery in a non distracting way.)

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

#92

Post by baddox »

jakear wrote: post #44
Isamu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It works fine up to 125% for me, but then it just zooms when you increase to 150%.

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

#93

Post by propter_hoc »

blueridge wrote: post #47

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://…

Thanks for the suggestions! I checked them all out. Lyon, Ivar and Arnhem are quite nice substitutes for Times.

The others I find a bit too "designed" to be used as straight substitutes. Their design is quite striking, and risks distracting from the message in long paragraph text. Particularly Gliko, which is beautiful for titling but I can't imagine reading more than a few sentences of it.

I'm personally quite partial to the Adobe fonts for book text:

* Adobe Garamond https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-garamond#fonts-section

* Adobe Caslon https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-caslon#fonts-section

* And to some degree, even Minion https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/minion

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

#94

Post by Tomte »

frank2 wrote: post #11
mrob wrote: post #7

The best three fonts are: "sans-serif" (for general use), "monospace" (for code), and "serif" (for when you need a secondary font for contrast). The choice of implementation for these fonts should be left to the reader (who will probably use the defaults for their browser/ebook reader). This way everybody gets the fonts they're used to, which are the easiest fonts to read. I don't even know which exact font I'm looki…

I would be interested in reading more about how you prevent web designers from changing the page's font. I used about:config on Firefox to stop fonts from downloading, but that made it hard for me to use github.com and one or 2 other sites because those sites use a font to render icons that are essential parts of the UI.

In Firefox: Options – Language and Appearance – Fonts and Colors – Advanced… – Disable “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above”

It's what I've been using for months now (and I also block web fonts using Firefox Focus' extension in iOS/iPadOS Safari). And that's even though I'm a typography geek, and have bought fonts from Matthew Butterick (the author of the submitted article).

Looks weird for a day or two, after that you never miss web fonts.

Make sure to select a nice default font (for example, Verdana is nice, but I'm German, and Verdana does not have a closing quotation mark for German – it's another one than is in use in English).

My setting is Constantia as default font and serif, Segoe UI as sans-serif, and Consolas as monospace.

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

#95

Post by dheera »

ken wrote: post #40

He lists only three 'flaws' with Times New Roman. The first is: > It was created for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts yet all the alternatives are almost exactly the same width. Plantin is even a bit narrower. How do they "avoid its shortcomings"? The second flaw is "italic is mediocre", which I'm not in a position to judge. The third (and main) complaint is "it connotes apathy", and one of th…

A lot of posts on HN are about "Hey I built this cool product" and I think that's perfectly fine.

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

#96

Post by dheera »

jeffmcmahan wrote: post #86

First, as a type nerd, I don't agree that Times is a bad font or that it signals "apathy." When I see nice kerning, judicious leading and tracking in a book design or webpage using a Times font - particularly LaTeX documents using TeX Gyre Termes - I'm generally very pleased. Second, Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo. Bembo is the opposite of Times ... it is e x p a n s i v e. It's like…

I'm also a type nerd and I can't stand Times New Roman. Or Arial, for that matter.

It screams apathy to me because it has been the "default" for a long time and if among the thousands of excellent fonts out there you pick the default, it feels very much apathetic. It makes a piece of work look like a high school essay.

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

#97

Post by metrokoi »

>When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color.

The author never considers the fact that a writer may simply like the way Times New Roman looks. There's nothing wrong with liking things that are popular or the default choice.

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

#98

Post by snowwrestler »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #82
quietbritishjim wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most monitors are definitely still not high enough resolution to render serif fonts more clearly than sans serif ones. (By resolution, I mean the original meaning of pixel density per unit area, not the modern usage of total pixel count.) Mobile screens are obviously higher resolution so it's less clear cut, but sans serif are still a bit clearer in my view. I think the problem here is that the text is much smaller i…

> By resolution, I mean the original meaning of pixel density per unit area, not the modern usage of total pixel count. Interesting - I wasn't aware "resolution" was ever used this way. PPI (pixels per inch) and "pixel density" are common terms for this now.

Resolution goes back even farther than that, to the number of line pairs that could be "resolved" (distinguished from one other) in an image. It was a way to compare the ability of imaging systems to capture and accurately display fine detail.

With digital sensors and screens you can pretty much just calculate it directly since you can't resolve detail below the pixel level. But, note that moire can eliminate fine detail well above pixel level if not controlled.

Before that, there were standard targets with fine lines in tight tapering patterns. Folks would take a picture of the target with a particular lens and film, and then count the smallest line pairs they could make out before the taper disappeared into an undifferentiated blur. By varying lenses and films, they could compare resolution. Example:

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-v...

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

#99

Post by myfonj »

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…

> [...] part of me gets really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling.

You can set your preferred font families in your browser's settings that would be used exactly in case of "no page author font preference". (You can even tweak default sizes, and even default colours, but setting wildly unusual default colours just reveals flaws in most author styles, so are not very practical, unfortunately.)

It is quite widely known fact (I think) but probably very rarely used feature; sorry for 'mansplaining' -- I bet you all know this and I would not be surprised if some of fellow HN readers even have non-default settings in there.

> I usually prefer Georgia [...]

What a coincidence, I read HN (and Wikipedia) in Georgia font, but not because of default browser settings, but because of site-specific user styles. I like my browser to be real "user agent".

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

#100

Post by krlx »

julianeon wrote: post #25

This was an interesting read, thanks. I can see Times New Roman being the choice of no choice - when you don't think about it, you get that. Reading this inspired me to think that I should search for an article like, "best fonts for people who don't know anything except Google Fonts" (I searched Google, wasn't very illuminating). I don't know much more than Comic Sans bad, Helvetica good, Times New Roman meh. But, I'…

Besides the practicaltypography website, reading Thinking with Type from Ellen Lupton was in my case a short, easy, and educative introduction to typography.
Post reply on HN