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Self-host your fonts for better performance

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Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#131

Post by colonwqbang »

rangibaby wrote: post #115
anoncake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re underestimating how much work and skill it takes to make a good font, even for a great designer, so type foundries like to lock good fonts up behind rent-seeking license agreements.

Selling fonts is not rent-seeking.

Rent-seeking would be if Google demanded money from a font designer to let their fonts be "compatible" with Chrome. I.e. Pay me or I'll make sure your product doesn't work with my product. App stores is a common example; pay Apple or they'll make sure your software doesn't run on the iPhone.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#132

Post by b112 »

dcgudeman wrote: post #127
tannhaeuser wrote: post #10

It's infuriating to see so much web tech being discarded created during the 90s and 00s in good faith, just because the web was subverted into an app delivery platform (in this case, shared caches were obsoleted by timing attacks) and the arms race for ever more crap to counter the negative effects, insufficiently. The web may now be a platform to lock-in and enslave users; just isn't anymore a recommendable place fo…

“Enslave users”, really?

Radicalization is the style of the time!

Their side is heinous, evil, and kills babies. Our side is just, wondrous, and angel like.

Thus, they enslave, we strive to break free, and bask in the pure bliss our utter and complete correctness enables.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#133

Post by lukepothier »

Maybe I'm being naïve, but why don't browsers ship with more popular fonts bundled to avoid problems like these? I have no issue with any of my browsers taking up fractionally more space for an extensive cache of the most popular web fonts when the payoff is better performance on so many sites.

Of course, servers should still be capable of serving the fonts that the client requires to render the content correctly, but the browser should be equipped to make that happen as quickly as possible.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#134

Post by UnfrozenCaveMan »

1. Who relies on a font that may or may not have been downloaded by a visit to some other website as a performance optimization for one's own website?

2. If cache partitioning obviates the performance benefit of CDNs for fonts, doesn't this mean you're better off hosting your own scripts and images for the same reason?

3. If CDNs are past their use-by date, will performance measurement tools finally stop admonishing you to host your assets there?

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#135

Post by b112 »

b112 wrote: post #132
dcgudeman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Enslave users”, really?

Radicalization is the style of the time! Their side is heinous, evil, and kills babies. Our side is just, wondrous, and angel like. Thus, they enslave, we strive to break free, and bask in the pure bliss our utter and complete correctness enables.

(12 years pass....)

Musk announces the newest brain-link, of which enplantment is a requirement to use modern phones. User complaints of random, altered perceptions of reality are brushed aside, and mostly accepted.

After a quick altered perception of reality. :P

Perhaps enslaved is on the table, 20 years out?

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#136

Post by bzb6 »

canofbars wrote: post #120
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)

Its actually incredible how ugly fonts render on windows. After using linux for so long I thought I was experiencing a bug when seeing fonts on windows.

Cleartype is an acquired taste :P

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#137

Post by chrismorgan »

fareesh wrote: post #110

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.

Take a read of https://hillbrad.github.io/sri-addressable-caching/sri-addre..., for a general discussion of how you can do that (piggybacking on top of subresource integrity), but also the problems of such a scheme in the general case.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#138

Post by jraph »

andybak wrote: post #126
canofbars wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually incredible how ugly fonts render on windows. After using linux for so long I thought I was experiencing a bug when seeing fonts on windows.

Have you got a screenshot? I'm curious as I regularly switch between Windows and MacOS and I'm happy enough with font rendering on both. In my recollection (and it's been a few years since I used a Linux GUI) Linux was the one with dodgy font rendering.

We probably get used to whatever font rendering the systems we use the most have.

To me, fonts indeed look blurry on macOS and weird on Windows. Screenshots from Windows with colored pixels particularly don't look good to me. Though after having seen screens of people using Windows 10, it seems they changed whatever I really didn't like about font rendering on Windows.

I still like font rendering on GNU/Linux (and Android) better it is correctly configured, which it is on widespread distributions with widespread desktop environments (I use a QHD screen). But it could be out of habit. On some configurations, kerning is bad though.

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#139

Post by tannhaeuser »

rangibaby wrote: post #115
anoncake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re underestimating how much work and skill it takes to make a good font, even for a great designer, so type foundries like to lock good fonts up behind rent-seeking license agreements.

The problem isn't designers who need of course compensation for their work, but building up an e-commerce stack, per-volume licensing infra, and publicity, leading to "platforms", verticals, concentration, and most commercial fonts being distributed by just two companies (Adobe and Monotype). In other words, middle-men taking all the money away, when easy self-publishing was the entire point of the web.

(Though I've heard Adobe Stock and iStock at least works ok for photographers and graphic artists for now)

Re: Self-host your fonts for better performance

#140

Post by jakub_g »

lukepothier wrote: post #133

Maybe I'm being naïve, but why don't browsers ship with more popular fonts bundled to avoid problems like these? I have no issue with any of my browsers taking up fractionally more space for an extensive cache of the most popular web fonts when the payoff is better performance on so many sites. Of course, servers should still be capable of serving the fonts that the client requires to render the content correctly, bu…

I'm not an expert but:

- 1. Copyright (though many fonts are free, true)

- 2. Everyone uses a different font (just like everyone uses a slightly different version jquery) so cache hit would be pretty small IMO. Do you really want a browser to be gigabytes large? Especially on mobile it's not viable

Maybe if browsers standardized on shipping, say, 20 carefully chosen fonts (not necessarily the most popular ones, just a good variety of different types of fonts), the smaller websites would follow and use them; but I think any major brand likes to distinguish themselves and have a custom unique font.

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