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The Fastest Google Fonts

csswizardry.com

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Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#21

Post by snazz »

tyingq wrote: post #13
brenden2 wrote: post #2

It's better to block web fonts with uBlock Origin. It would be sweet if someone could add support for these fonts to Decentraleyes as well, which seems to be missing. Seems to be some debate about the merits of doing so, however: https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/issues/34 I'm okay with 1st party usage, but I don't want Google following me around the web.

I wonder if Mozilla or DDG or some other privacy centric org might consider mirroring Google's fonts.

Cloudflare should do this. They already have the infrastructure and they have a pretty good privacy reputation.

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#22

Post by snazz »

inetknght wrote: post #6
brenden2 wrote: post #2

It's better to block web fonts with uBlock Origin. It would be sweet if someone could add support for these fonts to Decentraleyes as well, which seems to be missing. Seems to be some debate about the merits of doing so, however: https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/issues/34 I'm okay with 1st party usage, but I don't want Google following me around the web.

uMatrix blocks them when you disable css from third party sites. Noscript has an explicit checkbox for fonts.

So does uBlock Origin. It's the two As at the bottom of the panel.

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#23

Post by devadvance »

slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

For purely aesthetic purposes, this might be a fair point. However, there are many reasons to use custom fonts beyond that. One example is accessibility in a very broad sense. In some circumstances, it reasonable to use a font with more legible type across device types, more support for internationalization (i18n), or better support for uncommon characters (e.g., mathematics).

Another example is alternatives to image assets. Emoji are the common example here, but the private use areas [1] mean that fonts can be used to deliver what would otherwise be raster images or SVGs. A great example is mixing symbols in with text without resorting to images or CSS-via-spans to solve the problem. Think public transit icons, for instance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#24

Post by ggreer »

young_unixer wrote: post #16
slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

> Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. If you're content with mediocrity, sure. But if you value your brand you will want the fonts to send the message that you want to be associated with your brand. Also, you'll probably want them to be in line with the rest of the design.

Web fonts are my litmus test for whether I can trust a designer's judgment. Users don't want to see a site's brand in every letter on the page. They want legible text that loads quickly.

The default fonts on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android are the result of millions of dollars of R&D. Custom fonts are far more likely to have issues with kerning, hinting, or subpixel rendering. They also degrade load times and cause a re-flow when the font is done downloading.

All of these issues can be avoided by using the fonts that are already installed on the user's device. That's what Github, Wordpress, Facebook, and Twitter do. They all have distinct brands without custom fonts.

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#25

Post by jlg23 »

slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

> Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic.

Designers tend to disagree.

I personally agree with you, but if we were not a very small minority, lynx[1] would be much more popular today..

[1] https://invisible-island.net/lynx/

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#26

Post by gumby »

young_unixer wrote: post #16
slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

> Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. If you're content with mediocrity, sure. But if you value your brand you will want the fonts to send the message that you want to be associated with your brand. Also, you'll probably want them to be in line with the rest of the design.

> But if you value your brand you will want the fonts to send the message that you want to be associated with your brand.

That's an important point. Unfortunately loading custom fonts slows down the experience and when that happens it does tell me something about the brand.

(It's likely the overhead of loading fonts is drowned out by the overhead of all the trackers, but I have those blocked which speeds the web up enormously. Likely that makes me not the kind of reader you want...so this works out well for both sides).

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#27

Post by youngtaff »

rkagerer wrote: post #8

This page opens crazy fast (at least for me). Well done. EDIT: Okay, still a few things they could improve on ( https://gtmetrix.com/reports/csswizardry.com/N9gkLyhq )

I'd question the validity of any scoring mechanism that's still using YSlow scores

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#28

Post by thaumaturgy »

slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

There seems to be a reply like this at the top of every font-related thread on HN. I often wonder whether it's coming from designer/developers or from end users.

Web fonts aren't popular just because they're pretty. They continue to be used everywhere because they offer a consistency that's impossible to get otherwise. With a plethora of mobile devices and desktop environments, you can't get a consistent look-and-feel for a site with just installed fonts. For some really basic sites, that's totally okay and even hits a nice quaint aesthetic, but for the kinds of sites that people pay money for, that's not good enough.

Variability in system fonts means that getting consistent paragraph and header widths and spacing is impossible. It means that the text looks too dark sometimes and too light other times. It means that the font appears unreadably small sometimes and obnoxiously large other times. It means having to build a font stack and then keep it updated as preinstalled fonts change. It means spending a lot of time dealing with issues like Helvetica Neue looking okay on MacOS but rendering like ass on somebody else's desktop because they installed a free knock-off of it. It ultimately introduces a lot more complexity and fragility than properly using a locally-hosted web font.

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#29

Post by smnrchrds »

slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

> Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic.

Perhaps for English and other Latin-based alphabets. But for some other writing systems, system fonts are simply terrible.

Re: The Fastest Google Fonts

#30

Post by Flimm »

smnrchrds wrote: post #29
slashdev wrote: post #3

Just use the built-in fonts. Use a good fallback list so each platform gets a good option. Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. The people who care most are the ones making the decision to use that font. The solution, tritely, is they should stop caring about the little details that much. The bigger details are usually what move the needle. Don't get st…

> Specifying custom fonts is largely a waste of bandwidth for a very marginal improvement in aesthetic. Perhaps for English and other Latin-based alphabets. But for some other writing systems, system fonts are simply terrible.

I completely agree. System fonts render Arabic very differently on Windows, on Chrome OS and on Ubuntu, for instance, so differently that you feel you need to adjust the font size depending on the font being used.
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