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Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

collinmbarrett.com

31–40 of 146 posts

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#31
This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value.

By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#32

This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

I’ve been blocking webfonts for a long time, and not being subjected to the design is mostly a feature. The only time it’s not is when instead of glyphs you get weird alt text like UP_ARROW.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#33

This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

> provide the subtle design element that developers don't value

Does anybody apart from designers actually care?

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#34
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Web Fonts library preloaded in it so that's just called installing fonts! I think the idea of web fonts is so that new fonts could be added and a user doesn't have to do something local to the browser. And this feature costs privacy. If people really understood the implications of loss of privacy, they would not want it. However, most people don't, and would gladly swap privacy for features (and then in the…

Yes, but if you install the entire font library locally then you have all those fonts in your system font picker, which you may or may not want. You also have to continue checking for new fonts or have sites that use them break. Having an extension do this for you is easier. Also, there's no particular reason why webfonts need to cost privacy. The only reason to ever hotlink Google Fonts was to either... - Accelerate…

Please don't use TTFs for your webfonts. They are far too big for the task and the optimized option, WOFF2, is so well supported that barring a future formats, I would consider all other formats deprecated for the web—don't even host them or include them in @font-face.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#35
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Web Fonts library preloaded in it so that's just called installing fonts! I think the idea of web fonts is so that new fonts could be added and a user doesn't have to do something local to the browser. And this feature costs privacy. If people really understood the implications of loss of privacy, they would not want it. However, most people don't, and would gladly swap privacy for features (and then in the…

Yes, but if you install the entire font library locally then you have all those fonts in your system font picker, which you may or may not want. You also have to continue checking for new fonts or have sites that use them break. Having an extension do this for you is easier. Also, there's no particular reason why webfonts need to cost privacy. The only reason to ever hotlink Google Fonts was to either... - Accelerate…

and exactly how large of a download would be "download entire font library"? all that just to use one font? that's like downloading an entire JS library to use one thing from it if not worse.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#36

This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

True, but I believe the point is that the author is willing to sacrifice this for speed and privacy. Many who are privacy-conscious generally don't care about design and are prioritized on functionality and data safety. That's not to say design isn't important. I love apps and sites that follow fluid and modern UX, I just see it as second underneath privacy.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#37
post #6
post #3

iOS' Lockdown Mode blocks web fonts. Sad to see how many sites still use icon fonts instead of SVGs.

they do have the advantage of being easy to recolor even as an external resource. I personally don't use them and instead use SVGs and there's always the decision of whether to add a bunch of inline svgs, which you can do cool effects and even transitions on for hover effects or light/dark mode, or using external images, which are nicer in terms of separation of concerns, re-use without having to update multiple plac…

You can literally do all of that with SVGs sprites when the fill is set to currentColor.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if you install the entire font library locally then you have all those fonts in your system font picker, which you may or may not want. You also have to continue checking for new fonts or have sites that use them break. Having an extension do this for you is easier. Also, there's no particular reason why webfonts need to cost privacy. The only reason to ever hotlink Google Fonts was to either... - Accelerate…

and exactly how large of a download would be "download entire font library"? all that just to use one font? that's like downloading an entire JS library to use one thing from it if not worse.

If you're selfhosting you only need to have the fonts you actually intend to use, not the entire library. Having the entire library would only make sense for an extension that replaces Google Fonts requests with itself.

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#39
post #33

This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

> provide the subtle design element that developers don't value Does anybody apart from designers actually care?

with the a/b testing we’ve done in our admittedly niche market - yeah it matters

Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

#40

This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.

I have never felt a page read better with custom fonts instead of local system fonts. I suppose the reason is because most local system fonts prioritize readability to a fault, while custom fonts are chosen for aesthetics (and aesthetics don't necessarily relate to readability).

A webpage is a bunch of text, if your webpage can't be read with something like "font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;" then you are doing it wrong.

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