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Web fonts, boy, I don't know

meowni.ca

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Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#121

Post by SquareWheel »

kmfrk wrote: post #35
skizm wrote: post #14

Why are GIFs in articles a thing? Can anyone focus on the words while they are looping in the corner of your eye? I always open the inspector and delete the elements, but it is annoying to do that every time.

The GIFs are fine - although I get the impression that they weren't put through an optimizer. Converting GIFs to autoplay=false videos is still a miserable experience with kinda awful results. Not to mention that it takes forever.

Surely any screen recording software can output as a video format? Converting from video > gif > video would produce a janky output.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#122

Post by vbezhenar »

Web page should just disable web fonts, if they are not loaded after 1 second and reenable them, when they are loaded. It's not hard to do and it's greatly improves usability. Actually it would be nice, if browsers would do it automatically, show system font, if web font is not cached and it's not going to be ready in the next few milliseconds. Anything better than white page.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#123

Post by Freak_NL »

hpaavola wrote: post #85

What fonts are available in recent versions of all major operating systems? So what are the "web safe" fonts of 2016?

There are no more guarantees about which font is installed, although you will probably get a decent match if you use one of the old Microsoft core fonts (Verdana, Times New Roman, etc.). Just don't expect the exact font; often you will get a font that matches the metrics for the one you've chosen as a fall-back for those (once) popular fonts.

In any case, you can always safely specify one of these font groups: sans-serif, serif, monospace. These will give you the user's default font for that broad category of typefaces. No guarantees about which font you will get though.

If you do want to leverage installed fonts, you can craft a decent so-called font-stack that will cover a lot of fonts typically installed on various OSes. For instance, you might specify:

    /* Just an example, these do not necessarily match. */
    "DejaVu Sans", "Bitstream Vera Sans", "Droid Sans", Verdana, sans-serif;
Again, no guarantees, that is why we have web-fonts.

Also, I am probably missing something, but don't you just get the fall-back font (e.g., whatever matches sans-serif) with a web-font as long as you specify one? Isn't that common CSS knowledge among developers?

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#124

Post by JeremyNT »

jlarocco wrote: post #61
elcapitan wrote: post #27

Are there actually font blockers like ad blockers? That would solve the problem pretty easily for everybody who's annoyed. Although they probably won't be available for mobile browsers, where it's the most painful.

It's an option in uBlock, and it works great: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

I use this option. It's nice, but beware that your system fonts may not provide all of the unicode characters some pages expect, which can sometimes greatly hinder usability for sites that use such characters (and nothing else) in UI elements.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#125

Post by tyingq »

nulagrithom wrote: post #95
tyingq wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google.com is 366KB transferred for me. I wasn't trying to suggest all web pages should be svelte. I was suggesting that a page complaining about bloat should probably be optimized. Especially when we're talking about web fonts that are typically 50 to 150KB. I'd also call out a blog post that, for example, called out jQuery as being unneeded bloat, if the blog post itself used jQuery. Assuming the blog was itself ru…

http://imgur.com/a/zDVVN Also, the post isn't about bloat anyway; it's about FOIC vs FOUC and lazily loading fonts. Complaining that the page is "bloated" at 500kb (Edit: Fine, 1.2MB, whatever) is a shitty nitpick.

It's 500KB now. It was 1.2MB. Perhaps complaining about that is a nitpick. If so, is it more of a nitpick than "It’s also your responsibility to make your site load super fast, and if you don’t, it’s totes fair game for people (me) to whine about it on Twitter"?

Edit: The post itself has some pretty snarky language targeted at "flash" caused by waiting for a 50KB to 150KB download of a web font over a 2G connection. I think it's fair game to call out 600KB+ of animated GIFS that are heavier, and certainly "flash" more than just once in the blog post complaining about "flash" and download wait times. Call me nitpicky. The author of the post fixed these things sometime after it was posted here, so...hmm.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#126

Post by metellus »

Spivak wrote: post #79
icebraining wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite of saving is not wasting, it's spending . It's only a waste if you spend it badly.

Sure, but if they made 'battery saver' the default and gave you a 'power boost' toggle would you even notice? When would you turn it on?

When you turn battery saver on transition animations disappear (making everything feel less reponsive). The phone stops polling for updates as frequently. The screen dims. It's a noticeably worse experience because it does a lot to save battery. When I have plenty of battery or know that I'll be charging my phone soon I would much rather have all of those nice things than not. It's a tradeoff because the circumstances dictate how important saving battery is.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#127

Post by Klathmon »

WorldMaker wrote: post #71

I've been slowly adding the contents of Google Fonts into my system fonts storage as I see them used on sites that I visit often. Things like Open Sans and Roboto for instance are quite common. I think there would probably be a good case for an extension to automate that in some fashion for fonts with known open licenses (essentially anything from Google Fonts, for example) to go ahead and just install them into the…

You might not care, but as an FYI that can be used to fingerprint your browser more accurately.

And if you are a developer, make sure you correctly test your site on machines that DO NOT have the fonts installed, as the browser won't even try to load them if it already has them, and you'll likely never find any bugs related to that until it's too late.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#128

Post by at-fates-hands »

Mahn wrote: post #57
cperciva wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's click on this link... ah, not that link, let's go back. Yes, this link... NO! STOP MOVING!" This is my #1 complaint about reddit. Not due to fonts; but rather when I load reddit on my phone, a "get the reddit app" banner appears... timed perfectly so that my attempt to view my messages sends me off to the app store.

Heck, this is my #1 complaint of almost anything on a mobile browser. It's easily the worst offender when it comes to mobile in general; I wish browser vendors put a bigger focus on fixing this, somehow.

Didn't this start on the desktop and now because companies think it was successful on desktops, they need to extend it to mobile since they think everyone has 4G service?

I remember when your mobile experience was supposed to be a stripped down faster version of your desktop version. Now, they're both insanely hard to navigate and use.

So much for we dev progression, huh?

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#129

Post by jaredcwhite »

Yes, web fonts often suck on slow connections. Meanwhile, on fast-ish connections, I find the FOUC effect to be greatly annoying. That 1-2 seconds of seeing Times and Helvetica and then seeing Freight Text Pro and Proxima Nova drives me bonkers. I think there must be some kind of happy medium between FOUC for faster connections and rage-inducing FOIC for slow connections. Unfortunately, most devs (and sadly I claim to be one) don't test their sites frequently on a range of connection speeds so it's common to have badly-tuned font dynamics on sites.

Bottom line: as someone who cares about design and visual experiences, I don't think the answer is just accept and live with FOUC everywhere. Browsers and dev tooling both need to improve in order to find that happy medium.

Re: Web fonts, boy, I don't know

#130

Post by matt4077 »

lomnakkus wrote: post #58
smacktoward wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know your fonts are a deliberate design choice, but I'm here for content. Categorizing type as "a design choice" dismisses it as fashion rather than function, which I don't think is the case. Type can put fashion over function, but it can also enhance function by making text more readable, or perform a mix of both functions by expressing a point visually that reinforces the point the page is making textually. It…

> Categorizing type as "a design choice" dismisses it as fashion rather than function, which I don't think is the case. I think it's a question of how often it's one vs. the other. There are precious few good examples of web font usage -- so few, in fact, that I can't even think of one off the top of my head. > Type can put fashion over function, but it can also enhance function by making text more readable, How so?…

https://www.wired.com is excellent in how they use fonts to subtly indicate importance/recency/category.

Many newspapers use fonts very consciously, which usually has the effect that it doesn't enter the reader's consciousness. It's a subtle cue indicating the brand and the image it wants to project. oCmpare the NYT and the Economist – they aim to reach almost identical populations, but the NYT uses serifs (tradition, dependence, gravity) vs. the Econmist's sans (modern, fast, business).

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