I have some "pattern glare" issues. I find monospace fonts harder to read because it shimmers and glows. It happens with proportional fonts as well, just not as bad.
The Monospace Web
151–159 of 159 posts
Re: The Monospace Web
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is mostly with how fonts are packaged, because even if you serve WOFF and WOFF2 in addition to fallbacks like TTF, then the font will most likely include a whole bunch of symbols that you won’t actually display. A way around this would be to split the font into multiple subsets based on unicode-range, like how Google Fonts do it: https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Open+Sans&display=s... Sadly, I nev…
Or he could have just used "font-family: monospace;" and let the user's system font stack render it.
Sure, except:
- those fonts will have different sizes (not guaranteed to be metrically compatible), which would make working with UI harder
- sometimes the built in fonts look pretty unpleasant (Courier New, anyone?)
- it will look different on every OS, which in most cases will also complicate testing and hurt branding (in actual projects)
Instead, nobody cares and the only options we have are to either use the crappy web safe fonts, or waste bandwidth to make websites look better. Luckily, if you prefer the former approach, then you can untick "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" in Firefox options or the equivalent in other browsers.
Re: The Monospace Web
#153I was watching a video today that called stuff like this the "indie web" where the philosophy is anti-algorithm and tries to embrace all of the things that made the web a great place in the past. Things like RSS, custom blogs, forums, web rings etc... I started my own as well, it feels really nice.
Also sometimes called the small web. See The small web is beautiful by Ben Hoyt https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful
The section on microservices was an uncomfortable but cathartic read. We’re getting edicts from above that we need to go all in on microservices for new modules, and I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to steer us away from it for exactly the reasons the article outlines.
All I get in response is “we’ll just (it’s always “just”) solve that with ”. No-one seems to acknowledge that that only makes things more complex.
Re: The Monospace Web
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is another ooh, this is the thread to ask my question in. For years I wanted to make a Visual Studio [Code] extension that justifies comments as you type including hyphenation but accepting additional spaces as necessary. I never dared to really start beyond some research into relevant algorithms and libraries because it seems pretty complex. I tried to use things like fmt and par but mostly accepted that I can…
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stkb.rew... I use this extension extensively. It's not auto-wrapping, but you can bind it to an easy shortcut and wrap when you need to. I find it almost indispensable. I wrote a vscode extension to do the same thing, then discovered this one which does it far better.
I will give that one a try, might at least speed up things, but it still misses hyphenation and justification. Hitting enter when reaching the guide line takes the least effort but this might be really handy when editing existing comments, especially with auto wrap enabled.
Re: The Monospace Web
#155If you want to experience pure monospaced web, try Carbonyl or Browsh in a Terminal.
Re: The Monospace Web
#156I've been keeping a list of monospace pages: https://wonger.dev/posts/monospace-dump#web . Currently have ~50. Spacing is a challenge. And you lose some legibility giving up proportional fonts. I think kerning in proportional fonts makes a big difference, letting your eyes recognize the shape of different letter groupings. Monospace text is fine if you avoid long-form text, like when it's structured and highlighted i…
> Monospace text is fine if you avoid long-form text, like when it's structured and highlighted in a code editor. I agree, monospace without color and some formatting is like giving up a sense or spatial dimension. It's pointless austerity.
Why must monospace give up color?
Re: The Monospace Web
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They may not be the theoretical best way, but let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sure, but this being the web and the font choice literally being one line of CSS it is not that hard to make things slightly better for everyone involved. Even more so when a lot of the blogs I have in mind also try to appeal to a slightly broader audience than just the nerds used to monospaced fonts. > Older research…
See sibling https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41383534 For instance, in this very convo what matters is that we're talking past each other, and I think that'd likely happen regardless of whether our comments were in fixed or proportional fonts, regardless of what other typographical choices might be made.
Well, you presented your use case as an "on the other hand" counter argument for me saying what sort of fonts generally work better. Which it isn't, it is just a specific use case where monospaced fonts happen to be used and it is difficult to change them.
That doesn't change the fact that in environments where there is control over all that monospaced fonts rarely are the best choice for large bodies of text.
Re: The Monospace Web
#158It's cool! Btw I would like to report that the charts will mess up if you use Google Translate for the page.
Re: The Monospace Web
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I vaguely recall seeing a GameFAQs walkthrough that did this, and I think it might have been for a Final Fantasy game of some kind, but unfortunately I can't remember more than that.
GameFAQ was enough! FOUND IT! Thank you! https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/588741-super-metroid/faqs...
I would be even more impressed if the TOC and changelog followed the same layout.