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Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

public-sans.digital.gov

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Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#181

Post by noelsusman »

phkahler wrote: post #119
eddietejeda wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I run Federalist at 18F and absolutely love the work, the challenge and colleagues. We do everything in the open, so feel free to follow our work here: https://github.com/18F/federalist We also implement the USWDS, which you can follow here: https://github.com/18F/federalist-uswds-jekyll Let me know if you have any questions!

>> Let me know if you have any questions! If this is meant for web sites, I have a question and I ask this on HN a lot. Why does the government need to provide ANY fonts? I have a real problem with websites pushing their own fonts on users. I don't think it's their place. Users should select their preferred font in their own browser. Why would a US government site feel the need to use particular fonts? If this is for…

Users don't select their preferred font in their own browser. That's pretty much the end of it.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#182

Post by EricE »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #129
vesinisa wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must applaud your legislators for their foresight when they wrote the federal copyright charter. All works by. U.S. federal employees are in public domain, forming one of the planet's largest bodies of free online resources. The cultural impact of this collection is considerable also globally. In my country, all tax-funded government works are copyrighted. It's an ongoing battle to make each department release thei…

Doesn't apply to works by contractors paid by the government though. I don't know which this font is.

> Doesn't apply to works by contractors paid by the government though.

Depends on the terms and conditions of the contract. Keep trying to get people to ensure they secure rights for the government by default but it's a constant struggle to get people to sweat the details :p

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#183

Post by logifail »

Invictus0 wrote: post #26
optymizer wrote: post #22

The older I get, the more skeptical I become. Kudos to the author for releasing their project, it looks like a lot of effort went into it, so I hate to sound overly negative, but I just can't help wonder if there is a practical reason for the US government to develop its own font? Is Sans Serif Fonts the department where the US government can really make a difference, or is this just a designer who happened to get a…

Why bother having an architect of the Capitol, then? Why bother building government buildings out of stone when wood is cheaper? Appearances matter: would you want to do your taxes with Comic Sans?

> would you want to do your taxes with Comic Sans?

Q: Who would be prepared to do their taxes with Comic Sans if taxes were lower for those who did?

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#184

Post by cheerlessbog »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #163
benbristow wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you disable a tool which you know is used to build many websites nowadays then you really should expect a deprecated experience. You're in the minority and honestly I don't know why you should expect web developers to cater for you.

Because things like blogger and Google groups shouldn't require js to just view text. There is a large, large, enormously large body of work out there that doesn't need JavaScript to achieve its goal like showing text or images, but are more-or-leas broken without JavaScript. That's the tragedy. I don't expect a web app, such as Google maps or Google docs to work without js, but I should be able to read blogs and new…

Why don't you want to run JS, on a site you trust, that has no ads?

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#185

Post by carapace »

benbristow wrote: post #148
carapace wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one of "those who have voluntarily disabled JavaScript" this comment is pretty disappointing.

If you disable a tool which you know is used to build many websites nowadays then you really should expect a deprecated experience. You're in the minority and honestly I don't know why you should expect web developers to cater for you.

First, as a person who makes web sites and apps, I believe it's unprofessional to fail to account for users who can't or won't run JS. JS abuse is rampant. I choose not to let sites run JS by default because I don't trust most sites not to have some sort of compromise or malware.

Second, it's fine with me if some site wants to forgo my patronage, or provide "a deprecated experience", but not the government.

I certainly do expect my federal, state and local government to follow best practices and provide working websites that I can use without running JS.

I can't think of a single function of government that requires JS, thank God.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#186

Post by Someone1234 »

carapace wrote: post #185
benbristow wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you disable a tool which you know is used to build many websites nowadays then you really should expect a deprecated experience. You're in the minority and honestly I don't know why you should expect web developers to cater for you.

First, as a person who makes web sites and apps, I believe it's unprofessional to fail to account for users who can't or won't run JS. JS abuse is rampant. I choose not to let sites run JS by default because I don't trust most sites not to have some sort of compromise or malware. Second, it's fine with me if some site wants to forgo my patronage, or provide "a deprecated experience", but not the government. I certain…

> I certainly do expect my federal, state and local government to follow best practices and provide working websites that I can use without running JS.

Best practices is a moving target. What made sense in 1999 doesn't make sense in 2019. The web simply requires JS, CSS, and HTML today. If you disable any one you aren't compatible.

There's no actual argument for why websites should spend significantly to support a tiny subset of users that intentionally break compatibility for ideological reasons. It is unfair to our other >99% of users who we'd have more time for.

The old arguments such as accessibility aren't correct any longer: accessibility devices specifically support JavaScript (text contrast, HTML organization/order, aria tags, video subtitles, etc remain highly important).

If you really insist on a JavaScript free world you are of course welcome to visit a government office in person, pick up, and mail back a paper form. The website is merely a convenience we offer to you.

Otherwise you'll need an IE 10 or newer browser, on an Operating System that supports TLS 1.1 (Windows Vista or newer), JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#187

Post by dclowd9901 »

codetrotter wrote: post #115
dclowd9901 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applaud us when getting FOIA requests responded to doesn’t require retaining lawyers.

We should always demand more from our governments. But we should also celebrate them for doing good. The politicians and government workers are people too, and while different people have different motivations I know that I am not alone in valuing praise from others highly. If all someone hears is complaints, I think they are probably more likely to burn out. I don’t have any source to back this claim, but it’s how I…

I have very high standards, but expecting public information to be public wouldn’t even be meeting those. It would be meeting one of my most basic standards.

To reject and fight FOIA requests takes _effort_, more so than simply complying with them. So no, I will not applaud shit. Our government needs to get past “basically good” before I praise them for frosting like this.

But feel free to embrace your feel good powwow approach. It’s done us so well so far.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#188

Post by yoz »

frogpelt wrote: post #88
eddietejeda wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I run Federalist at 18F and absolutely love the work, the challenge and colleagues. We do everything in the open, so feel free to follow our work here: https://github.com/18F/federalist We also implement the USWDS, which you can follow here: https://github.com/18F/federalist-uswds-jekyll Let me know if you have any questions!

Do you (18f) have any success with redesigning internal government sites, those that require smart cards to access? Some of those are the worst.

I was at 18F for almost 4 years. In that time, many of the projects I worked on were internally-facing. The US Government runs thousands of internally-facing websites and web applications. Many of them are entirely internal to single agencies, others are for inter-agency collaboration. Many of them require PIV or CAC cards for auth. And yes, many of them - whether card-authenticated or not - are utterly horrific.

This is a big part of why the USWDS project was created. 18F is tiny, and there's no way it could address even 1% of .gov by itself. Fortunately, there are many people all across government who want to improve UX on sites and apps. USWDS is a good starter kit that significantly reduces the cost of such projects for everyone, not just 18F.

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#189

Post by eitland »

Someone1234 wrote: post #79
dpcx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://openforest.fs.usda.gov/christmas-trees/forests has a pretty heavy dependency on Javascript (read: there's no fallback to anything non-javascript, so I get a white page). It feels like that goes against some of the things that 18F is about.

Pages don't need a fallback to non-Javascript in 2019. Accessibility technologies now fully support a JS enabled web, with accessibility standards following suit. That leaves only those who have voluntarily disabled JavaScript ( I've worked on public facing government websites (not 18F). We simply don't support this edge case, and our legal department supports our legal right to do so (in particular in relation to AD…

> Pages don't need a fallback to non-Javascript in 2019. Accessibility technologies now fully support a JS enabled web, with accessibility standards following suit.

I think we should broaden the definition of accessibility to make websites aren't unneccesarily annoying or invasive for normal users either ;-)

(And yes, making web applications is part of my job.)

Re: Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display

#190

Post by eitland »

Someone1234 wrote: post #133
nulbyte wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly disagree. This is a public-facing government website. It ought to degrade gracefully in order to reach the broadest possible audience. Or, write a decent site to start with, and you wouldn't have to worry about degrading. The entire page is nothing but a shell for a web app written in JavaScript that doesn't need to be a web app written entirely in JavaScript.

> It ought to degrade gracefully in order to reach the broadest possible audience. You mean under 1% of users that intentionally broke their browser? Seems unreasonable to dedicate resources to that, that could be better spent on 99% of our users. Why should the 1% get special treatment? And what other parts of their browser can they disable that we need to support, perhaps no CSS? Maybe IE5? Maybe they only render X…

> You mean under 1% of users that intentionally broke their browser?

I'd say: configured their browser to work like a browser instead of like a platform to run arbitrary code from the Internet.

Ideally we should be able to trust most of the web sites we visit. The last few years have shown us this is a bad idea, here are my two top reasons:

- security: while I'm personally less concerned with reasonable ads there are a number of problems with ad technology, like infectious ads and creepy tracking.

- a bigger problem for now IMO: poorly written web apps that makes the machine noticably slower.

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