Icons – Google Fonts • Hacker News Board

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#151

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #144

tablespoon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I deal with a lot of legacy interfaces with brightly colored icons and they can be just as confusing if not more confusing than minimalist icons. But I think people have a survivorship bias (we remember the good examples over the bad ones),... I don't think anyone's disputing that you can do colorful icons poorly, but that's not an argument against them as a concept. > ...as well as a familiarity bias (I like the t…

I would argue that we are not "fixing things that aren't broken". Technology is being adopted by more and more people. It should make sense that we find ways to make improvements to reach more and more users. I think software people run the real risk of designing interfaces only they like. I'm currently dealing with software that uses old style icons and menus and users just thoroughly do not understand the interface…

> I would argue that we are not "fixing things that aren't broken". Technology is being adopted by more and more people. It should make sense that we find ways to make improvements to reach more and more users. I think software people run the real risk of designing interfaces only they like.

What I meant by that comment is redesigning interfaces for aesthetics reasons: skeuomorphism is out, now skeuomorphism is in, now it's out again. Whitespace is out, whitespace is in. Google has a new icon set out so now our icons are "out of date," etc.

Furthermore, there are real costs to obsoleting users' expertise with an existing interface, and those costs may not be outweighed by marginal improvements in a new design. Also expert users and beginning/casual users have very different needs, and I think there's often too much focus on beginners.

> We're finding with flat, simpler icons we have a lot more control about making certain icons more important than others. We can still give them color! And it will be more meaningful! We can make them pop out when we need to!

And that totally makes sense and I agree with it. What I disagree is rejecting color and depth in an interface for reasons of aesthetics, ideology, or fashion.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#152

Post by tomasroggero » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

vagab0nd wrote: post #97

Google Fonts used to have this great feature where I can select a number of fonts and view them all on a single page. It was super useful because I can type in any text and preview the text in these selected fonts. However, I can't seem to find this feature any more. Right now if I select fonts, they just show up in the sidebar. But I can preview them in any way. There's gotta be something that I missed?

After you selected a few, you can review your selection in the Share page.

For example, https://fonts.google.com/share?selection.family=Akaya%20Teli...

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#153

Post by bigfudge » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

adflux wrote: post #47

madeofpalk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a web developer, it literally is your only job to make a website that is usable by people.

By which people? I think thats up to the developer to decide.

No - in most western countries it's decided in law that reasonable efforts should be made to support most people, those with disabilities like visual impairment included.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#154

Post by tonoto » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

All those icons and no icon for +1 ?

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#155

Post by ridaj » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #132

systemvoltage wrote: post #102

I am sorry but I am going to be that guy. Iconography has regressed so much, it's all the same optically to me. Designers keep pushing minimalism and line-graphics to "reduce crud" like its some sort of a religion. We can't distinguish icons well. There is no effort put into making them more unique and recognizable. What a horrible cult. Check out these glorious past remnants that we've forgotten about, they were so…

> Google services icons? All impossible to tell apart now. Google went for maximum idiocy when they tried to use logos to serve two distinct roles: branding and utility. Which is why they look like complete unreadable ass. They forgot the simple fact that if you want branding, logos must look unique. And if you want utility, icons must be representative . It's a classic case of wanting impossible design. I suspect th…

Seems like they went with branding at the expense of utility. Not sure they were trying to do both.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#156

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #124

Tagbert wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you block fonts, this is not a surprise. Using a fresh in stall of Firefox, the linked page displays the icons correctly.

that,s the point. not everyone WANTS to load them or CAN load/see them.

[deleted]

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#157

Post by antpls » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

hunter2_ wrote: post #66

laurent92 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Check-circle” is exactly the amount of information that the able reader has. Sight-deficient users are as much used to those weird words as able users are used to unintelligible icons.

If the image stands alone such that sighted users must parse it, then your logic is correct. But if the image is merely decorative due to adjacent text such that sighted users gloss over the image, aria-hidden affords users of screen readers that exact same efficiency instead of wasting their time. In other words, eyes can skip over decorations without the developer needing to flag them as such, but audio can't auto-…

Wouldn't it make more sense to have everything "hidden" by default and have an explicit "aria-include" ?

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#158

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

jfk13 wrote: post #25

I see they promote the ligature approach: face where the font is expected to ligate the characters 'f', 'a', 'c', 'e' into a single glyph. This can be problematic on the web, as it means that if a user doesn't get your webfont for any reason (download failed, browser settings that disable webfonts, accessibility options that override fonts for clarity, etc) the entire word will appear in a fallback font, often totall…

If they don't load the icons (whether they are image icons or font icons or svg icons), the presentation is badly busted in any case.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#159

Post by SebastianKra » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #102

I am sorry but I am going to be that guy. Iconography has regressed so much, it's all the same optically to me. Designers keep pushing minimalism and line-graphics to "reduce crud" like its some sort of a religion. We can't distinguish icons well. There is no effort put into making them more unique and recognizable. What a horrible cult. Check out these glorious past remnants that we've forgotten about, they were so…

What is it with HN being so hostile towards design?

So many smart designers are carefully considering how to make genuinely ideal interfaces.

But fuck them, they're just too lazy to put effort into complex interfaces, they're just following trends. They don't know what there doing. But Winamp-Themes where you can barely even see the buttons - yes, those are great.

Sure, mistakes are made, and overcorrections happen. Everyone was tired of skeuomorphism a while ago (ironically, OP seems to have forgotten that). The response was a vast overcorrection and we're still recovering from that. But if you honestly think that we're off worse now, then I can only shake my head.

(EDIT) But why is this hostility so prevalent in the developer demographic? Apparentlyy everyone else is okay. (unless you want to argue that there is some secret designer cult that imposes their will on everyone). Is it age? Are we just damaged from looking at a terminal too much?

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#160

Post by core-questions » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #132

systemvoltage wrote: post #102

I am sorry but I am going to be that guy. Iconography has regressed so much, it's all the same optically to me. Designers keep pushing minimalism and line-graphics to "reduce crud" like its some sort of a religion. We can't distinguish icons well. There is no effort put into making them more unique and recognizable. What a horrible cult. Check out these glorious past remnants that we've forgotten about, they were so…

> Google services icons? All impossible to tell apart now. Google went for maximum idiocy when they tried to use logos to serve two distinct roles: branding and utility. Which is why they look like complete unreadable ass. They forgot the simple fact that if you want branding, logos must look unique. And if you want utility, icons must be representative . It's a classic case of wanting impossible design. I suspect th…

> when they tried to use logos to serve two distinct roles: branding and utility.

But you can do this. MS Office has done so one way or another for decades - the icons in the product family have similar, distinctive design language, but each also clearly conveys which product it is with shape, colour, and a clear letter logo.