All you may need is HTML • Hacker News Board

Re: All you may need is HTML

#21

Post by lelandfe » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

As always, I think the custom font hate is overstated.

> Custom fonts are a waste of bandwidth

Latin subsetted fonts are generally 10-30Kb, it's really not that much. For comparison, it's unlikely you'll see blog authors get up in arms over a single PNG.

> they come with one of three evils called latency, FOUT, and FOIT

A few milliseconds of a different font appearing is truly not much of an evil, but can be addressed by exactly what the author links in their footnote.

Humorously, the author's own site is committing some sins here: both of two font files are >140kb, they don't have gzip on, and they have the fonts marked `font-display: block`. They could cut their CLS and LCP by almost 100% by addressing this: https://i.imgur.com/MOl32iS.png

Of course, it's already very fast, by virtue of having no other resources loading. This would be dramatically worse if there were scripts that needed to get downloaded.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#22

Post by PinguTS » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

A blog post, which tells me that I onbly need HTML no CSS with lots of points, the blogpost itself doesn't follow?

Please, eat your own dog food first.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#23

Post by LeifCarrotson » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #4

> Originally this website's font-family simply requested monospace. This approach resulted in varying reading experience depending on the OS. Windows browsers got Consolas, Linux users got DejaVu Sans Mono, and macOS people got Courier. I find it so sad that our browsers have such bad default fonts that all websites feel the need to override them to get an acceptable look. It would be great if browsers had decent def…

Consolas is not bad. DejaVu is not bad. Only Courier/Courier New are so bad as to be unusable, it seems Apple wants to push web developers to use font overrides.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#24

Post by kevincox » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

webstrand wrote: post #12

kevincox wrote: post #4

> Originally this website's font-family simply requested monospace. This approach resulted in varying reading experience depending on the OS. Windows browsers got Consolas, Linux users got DejaVu Sans Mono, and macOS people got Courier. I find it so sad that our browsers have such bad default fonts that all websites feel the need to override them to get an acceptable look. It would be great if browsers had decent def…

At least on linux, it's not the browser that picks the font used for "monospace" but part of fontconfig. I've reconfigured my fontconfig to use a different font for monospace.

At least on Firefox it is both. By default it uses raw fontconfig for default, serif, sans-serif and monospace. But it uses an override for emoji fonts. You can also explicitly override these in the preferences and then it doesn't consult fontconfig (or probably consults it with a precise font name).

But yes, I have seen decent browser fonts for most Linux distros.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#25

Post by janjones » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:56 PM UTC

> A host for your index.html files Hostgator $33/year plan.

> A DNS pointing to the host Hostgator for an extra $12.95/year.

Why not use Netlify or GitHub pages? They can host static files for free.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#26

Post by toastal » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #4

> Originally this website's font-family simply requested monospace. This approach resulted in varying reading experience depending on the OS. Windows browsers got Consolas, Linux users got DejaVu Sans Mono, and macOS people got Courier. I find it so sad that our browsers have such bad default fonts that all websites feel the need to override them to get an acceptable look. It would be great if browsers had decent def…

> even their preferred font if they bothered to customize it.

Felt. I actually do adjust my user agent fonts and system fonts, and I hate it when these "system UI font stacks" aren't just "sans-serif" and I end up with Arial or Ubuntu because some guru said this is how you do it. Especially irksome though is the monospace fonts--either Courier New (which hints way too thin to be readable on my main display) or using some hard-to-decipher custom font that abuses ligatures.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#27

Post by shanebellone » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

"If you can stick to the same style long enough and also write articles for long enough, your style sheet can become your brand. But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego."

This is blatantly incorrect or a flagrant misrepresentation. CSS can certainly improve readability without adding design.

Readability is a check list which stock HTML does not address.

https://practicaltypography.com/

Re: All you may need is HTML

#28

Post by y3k » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

janjones wrote: post #25

> A host for your index.html files Hostgator $33/year plan. > A DNS pointing to the host Hostgator for an extra $12.95/year. Why not use Netlify or GitHub pages? They can host static files for free.

100% agree, nowadays for static websites the only thing you need to pay is your domain, if that matters to you.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#29

Post by KerrAvon » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:59 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #16

qbasic_forever wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience the default fonts on Apple devices are far and away the best fonts, period. They're better than almost every custom font, especially for readability.

I don't have an Apple device to test but does that mean that the author's point about the default `monospace` font "Courier New, is not legible" is out of date or just a rare opinion?

I think Courier is the only one of the fonts listed above that’s not sans-serif. The retro typewriter effect is not probably not what he wants for displaying a lot of prose in a modern context. I don’t think it’s actually illegible.

Re: All you may need is HTML

#30

Post by criticalstone » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:59 PM UTC

truculent wrote: post #18

I sympathise with the main thrust of the post but, to nitpick, this is just plain wrong: > But mostly css appeals to our vanity and ego. Design isn't just about aesthetics. Good information design, clear visual hierarchy, accessibility, etc. all help with communication. The author's effective use of spacing, bold, and code tags show us that they know this intuitively, despite what they write.

I agree, I get the idea that a blog doesn't have to be fancy, but a simple css theme with nice spacing and good font size goes a long way. The examples they show makes me click away instantly, because it is so damn hard to read.