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Self-host your fonts for better performance

wicki.io

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Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#101

Post by ThePhysicist »

gostsamo wrote: post #4

A question: instead of redownloading the same resources again and again, can we achieve privacy by adding delay between requesting a resource and providing it? It could be the same amount of time it took downloading it the first time or some randomized value. It won't speed up pages, but at least will save from bandwidth and data caps.

You don't need a timing attack as you could e.g. put a unique identifier in the resourcce you're delivering via the CDN. When the browser delivers the resource from its cache for another domain you could simply extract the identifier from it again to achieve cross-site tracking.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#102

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

test1235 wrote: post #99
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guy who does this blocking pretty ruthlessly (edit: inc. cookies), I'd like to understand why - I don't take offence at 'sneer', ISWYM but I'd like to understand the other side of the fence. TIA

sorry, 'sneer' is probably a bit strong - it's really just a lack of understanding on my part (of your side of the fence). I personally find browsing the internet without javascript or cookies enabled by default to be incredibly frustrating/inconvenient, but I'm sure it's all very subjective, down to your own personal browsing habits.

Thanks, and I understood the word was used for dramatic effect only.

From my POV I too find it frustrating at times, but I'd say much of that comes quite unnecessarily not from JS use, but its abuse, eg. fails to display text unless JS is enabled. HTML is pretty good at that!

There's no point me boring you with all the plusses of not using js (just ask) but speed... once a connection is made this http://antirez.com/latest/0 is pretty much instantaneous.

(thanks for your reply)

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#103

Post by anoncake »

corty wrote: post #58
frereubu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cleaner" feel may well be to do with better font rendering for desktop fonts, because you'll be using something like TTF rather than WOFF. Web font files have to trade off file size for quality, which desktop fonts don't have to do.

Most free fonts are rather poor quality. Most font designers seem to publish web fonts for free as an advertisement for their services or print font products they sell. As a consequence, while the sample sentence might look great, the feeling when reading is poor. Especially screen optimisation is lacking, which is what distinguishes the usual fonts you get with your OS (like Arial or Roboto) from stuff you would buy…

Font designers publish poor quality fonts to promote their products? That isn't supposed to work.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#104

Post by barrkel »

bzb6 wrote: post #68
frereubu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cleaner" feel may well be to do with better font rendering for desktop fonts, because you'll be using something like TTF rather than WOFF. Web font files have to trade off file size for quality, which desktop fonts don't have to do.

The cleaner look is because most designers use macOS which renders most fonts in a way that makes them all look good (let’s not get into technical details). On Windows the same fonts might look like shit (for example some parts of a character are thicker than the rest for no apparent reason)

MacOS makes text blurry. You need a high resolution monitor for macOS font rendering to be acceptable.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#106

Post by danielheath »

smt88 wrote: post #80
test1235 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

firefox options -> language and appearance -> advanced -> uncheck 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above'

Won't this break the UI of most sites because they (ab)use web fonts to add icons? It's annoying to hit a page with a video player, and all the buttons are little boxes with numbers in them because the icon font didn't load...

“No web fonts for elements containing multiple characters” would be a great ublock rule, now I think about it...

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#107

Post by Proven »

_a1_ wrote: post #32
robin_reala wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a really fast web experience, try disabling images and javascript too! (on rereading this I sounded sarcastic, but I really wasn’t trying to be)

I'm using uMatrix and by default all javascripts are blacklisted until I explicitly enable it for the site. The downside of this is that lots of websites are broken, payment sites are non-functional, but after a week of building the whitelist, the web is somehow usable again.

remember to backup your customizations!

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#108

Post by 0x0000000 »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #90

When I was doing a conversion from image based game banners (said how many people were in the server and shit) to a javascript solution that used a single json for all servers (as we got to 9 servers, loading at page start and refreshing these every n seconds was getting wasteful), I ran into this issue. I wanted to keep the look and feel of the php/gd monospace font (could never find which font this used), but the n…

Rare to see a BYONDer on HN!

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#109

Post by martimarkov »

barrkel wrote: post #104
bzb6 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cleaner look is because most designers use macOS which renders most fonts in a way that makes them all look good (let’s not get into technical details). On Windows the same fonts might look like shit (for example some parts of a character are thicker than the rest for no apparent reason)

MacOS makes text blurry. You need a high resolution monitor for macOS font rendering to be acceptable.

Like the one that comes with my laptop or is sold by apple?

I think macOS will always be optimised for the best experience. Even if that means sub par XP if you don’t go all in on money.

I’d actually be interested in learning more about the rendering vs say windows if you have a source.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#110

Post by fareesh »

What if you had a declaration like

@font-face { font-signature: somehash }

And the browser just checks to see if it already has the font. If you release a webfont you can share it with signatures or just generate signatures if the author hasn't done it for you.

This way if you're self-hosting Lato and the user already has Lato, they don't need to download it again.

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