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Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)

collinmbarrett.com

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

#81

Post by phantomathkg »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
FractalHQ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As both a developer and designer, this comment seems absurd to me. Art and information both play vital roles in the human experience.

A computer and any code that execute within one are tools, and tools must first and foremost serve to enable its user. This means when it comes to software design, function always trumps form. A tool should never be designed with form over function in mind, it must always be function over form. Any form (design) that impedes the function must be culled with extreme prejudice. When it comes to remote fonts, they slow…

> When it comes to remote fonts, they slow down page download and consequently load time.

Show example please.

> they violate privacy rules and laws,

Show more example please. Let's not forget when you access a webpage, the server already know what IP address you are connecting form. If the web font is loaded from the same host, the owner of the page does not violate any privacy rules than servicing you the page.

> they impede accessibility when fallbacks fail or do not exist

This is only when it failed.

> Most of us also know from experience that software designers by and large prioritize form over function, oftentimes with complete disregard for the function thereof.

You may have experienced designers who are bad at their job, but it does not mean a good design, including using or not using web font, help deliver the function better.

> So I second grandparent post's opinion: Screw designers. Removing them from the development process will bring about more net benefits than any benefits they might be bringing to the table.

I welcome your view, despite how myopic it is, and I hope you live by your value, which means code using vim/emac, not using any GUI tools, and browse the internet using lynx the text internet browser.

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

#82

Post by megous »

legitster wrote: post #76

> While they deny the practice, these services have the ability of profiling your browser (using browser fingerprinting with your IP address and HTTP referer header) to track what sites you visit, building a valuable profile about you that they could sell to marketers. As a person who works in martech it's patently bizarre to read this stuff. There's a difference between something being provent theoretically possible…

> often only things that lets someone know they are being MitM attacked or phished is when the corporate branding feels "off"

Why? Man in the middle can just snatch off the credentials on the way back to the backend, they don't need to change anything.

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

#83

Post by hulitu »

phantomathkg wrote: post #60
Dalewyn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doin…

A good design should have good fallback. Yes. A random example will be bbc.com, where BBC Reith fallback to Arial, Helvetica Free Sans and San serif. With modern web "application", the chances you see a bunch of text would either be the T&C page, documentation you read, or news website. These days we shop online as much as we do physically, so I pick two random clothing brand, Uniqlo and Levis. To create the same exp…

User experience is more than fonts. Most of the sites are unreadable at default browser zoom. Printing is almost impossible (i know, nobody prints those days). Gray on gray is the norm.

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

#84

Post by chrismorgan »

userbinator wrote: post #8

I find it somewhat amusing that this is one setting that IE has always had in its GUI: https://i0.wp.com/improveandrepeat.com/wp-content/uploads/20... Firefox has this setting built-in, gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled and browser.display.use_document_fonts, but AFAIK it's not configurable via GUI by default. Chrome hides it even deeper in a command-line option, --disable-remote-fonts

browser.display.use_document_fonts is Settings → Fonts → Advanced → Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. Note that that’s distinct from disabling web fonts: it will cause your chosen fonts to be used (so `font-face: some-web-font, Arial, sans-serif` will resolve to sans-serif), but still allow loading of web fonts for the Private Use Area, so that all mainstream icon fonts except for Google’s misbegotten Material Icons (which uses ligation of ASCII code points, which is a technique that was a horribly misguided idea from the start and makes accessibility worse far, far more often than it makes it better, and the precious few cases it makes better could readily be made betterer by other techniques) will still work.

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

#86

Post by ogurechny »

upbeat_general wrote: post #13

One thing I don’t see mentioned here is the possibility of additional profiling by disabling web fonts. Doesn’t this make you more more unique as a user since very few people disable web fonts? I suppose you could argue that many users can be uniquely identified either way but it’s no doubt a strong additional piece of info.

The point is not to access third party tracking hosts (including web fonts and JS library servers) at all. The number of sites that implement first party server-side tracking to exchange data with other systems (like Imgur) is much lower than the number of sites that “simply added” fonts, libraries or counters from popular delivery networks.

Unless, of course, we talk about any site that uses Cloudflare, which is a first party tracking service built into into the web server itself.

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

#87

Post by ccouzens »

nuker wrote: post #61

The main privacy breach is Referrer HTML header in request for fonts, which feeds browsing history to Google.

The original site can set

Referrer-Policy: no Or Referrer-Policy: same-origin

To avoid sending its url to third parties. Of course it requires the original site to configure itself that way and doesn't help with the user's preferences.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...

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

#88

Post by onion2k »

legitster wrote: post #76

> While they deny the practice, these services have the ability of profiling your browser (using browser fingerprinting with your IP address and HTTP referer header) to track what sites you visit, building a valuable profile about you that they could sell to marketers. As a person who works in martech it's patently bizarre to read this stuff. There's a difference between something being provent theoretically possible…

The entire browser profiling angle refers to something that does not currently exist, does not conceivably scale well, and chases after an infinitesimally small potential monetary gain

This is where the tech industry is at though. All the low hanging fruit has been harvested long ago. The tens of thousands of devs in the Bay Area are building things that make "infinitesimally small potential monetary gain" because at web scale that's hundreds of millions of dollars. They might not be doing this particular thing, but they are doing something, so vigilance is necessary if you value your privacy.

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

#89

Post by megous »

phantomathkg wrote: post #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.

Font readability is the function of familiarity with the given font. So if the user clicks that checkbox to disable thirdparty fonts in the browser and use a familiar font everywhere, I think the user is right. :)

That's why I disable thirdparty fonts by default and bug our designers when some text overflows in our app, due to some fixed width assumption in CSS, because system native font they did not design for is wider.

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

#90

Post by hulitu »

FractalHQ wrote: post #53
RedShift1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screw designers. They have ruined so many things over the years. It's time to take back control.

As both a developer and designer, this comment seems absurd to me. Art and information both play vital roles in the human experience.

Art is present on maybe 0.1 % of the sites. There is no "art" on Google, Microsoft, New york times, bbc etc.
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