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Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

fontcdn.toolforge.org

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Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#21

Post by chrismorgan »

jcahill wrote: post #13
chrismorgan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

The other advantage of a font CDN is updating.

I don’t know if Google Fonts has changed its policies, but historically it pretty much just hasn’t updated its fonts. Even when repeatedly asked to by the original font’s author. Take as an example Crimson from https://github.com/skosch/Crimson: Google took Crimson Text in 2010 and put it onto Google Fonts, but mangled it in the process, messing up its line-height badly so that the regular and bold weights didn’t match, and that text using the web font would not line up with text using the original font. In 2012, the upstream font made various improvements, and the author attempted upon multiple occasions then and since to get Google Fonts to update the font (or even just to fix the bugs they introduced, for starters!). Others also tried. Well, it’s still broken. In the end a new version of the font (with variable weight) was commissioned in 2018, and Crimson Pro now is. Allegedly the problems in Crimson Text were supposed to be fixed up after Crimson Pro was released: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2395#issuecomment-631....

I am aware of them updating fonts that they commissioned. But I know of multiple cases where Google Fonts has been serving versions of fonts that are five or more years out of date, sometimes even broken by Google Fonts. Crimson Text I can kinda understand them not fixing completely, because fixing it would have changed character positioning (thus breaking people’s careful alignment to work around the Google-Fonts-introduced bugs). But there have been other cases where that didn’t apply: metrics were the same, but they just wouldn’t update the font. Might have been PT Serif? Lato? I can’t remember, it’s years since I last cared about Google Fonts.

In short: updating the fonts is not all it’s cracked up to be; Google mostly just doesn’t, and half the time you actually wouldn’t want the font updates anyway—depends on the nature of the update.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#22

Post by gruez »

mada360 wrote: post #12
whoopdedo wrote: post #10

My idea, a browser extension that downloads a mirror of the most popular fonts and intercepts requests to google inserting device local CSS instead. Might not be desirable for mobile devices, but with ample storage you get faster page loading and no telemetry sent to anyone.

That sound exactly like what decentraleyes does https://decentraleyes.org/

AFAIK it only caches js files, not fonts.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#23

Post by pbhjpbhj »

chrismorgan wrote: post #7
SquareWheel wrote: post #2

As much as I hate to post a pessimistic "Just do X instead" comment... why not just serve the fonts locally? It's no more difficult than serving any other asset. And if you're worried about privacy, then serving files locally removes any dependency on a third-party server at all (or two in this case).

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

Another issue is copyright, which for typefaces and fonts varies considerably by jurisdiction - using Google seems to offload liability as long as you use it within their terms then they should at least be the leading co-party if a rights owner sued.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#24

Post by GoblinSlayer »

frankzander wrote: post #17
forty wrote: post #15

Why are people adding external fonts everywhere? Aren't there enough fonts built in browsers to make most people happy?

You mean Roboto everywhere? Maybe I have a preference for Lora in the headlines because it goes good with another font in mass text? Fonts are commonly underrated but take a look at some cooperate identities ... you recognize Mercedes every time you see a truck with ads of Mercedes on it because of what? You guessed it right ... fonts. This wouldn't be possible if everyone would use Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman…

If ads are the only use case for fonts, all the more reasons to kill them with fire.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#26

Post by lucideer »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #23
chrismorgan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

Another issue is copyright, which for typefaces and fonts varies considerably by jurisdiction - using Google seems to offload liability as long as you use it within their terms then they should at least be the leading co-party if a rights owner sued.

> seems to

Do you have a source for this? IANAL but if a Google font was disallowed for a jurisdiction, Google would be in legal trouble for advertising/hosting it on their own site, but that would be a separate case. I seriously doubt they'd share any of the liability for you using it on your site.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#27

Post by dt3ft »

SquareWheel wrote: post #2

As much as I hate to post a pessimistic "Just do X instead" comment... why not just serve the fonts locally? It's no more difficult than serving any other asset. And if you're worried about privacy, then serving files locally removes any dependency on a third-party server at all (or two in this case).

At last I see someone else recommending this, I was starting to think I'm the only one opposed to 3rd party hosted "free" fonts. I chose to host the fonts myself for my 20-things.com side project. It was a hassle to set up, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#28

Post by dvcrn »

chrismorgan wrote: post #7
SquareWheel wrote: post #2

As much as I hate to post a pessimistic "Just do X instead" comment... why not just serve the fonts locally? It's no more difficult than serving any other asset. And if you're worried about privacy, then serving files locally removes any dependency on a third-party server at all (or two in this case).

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

Oh wow I wasn’t aware that cross site caching isn’t a thing anymore. That’s how I learned it years ago from the jquery days

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#29

Post by fr3dx »

chrismorgan wrote: post #7
SquareWheel wrote: post #2

As much as I hate to post a pessimistic "Just do X instead" comment... why not just serve the fonts locally? It's no more difficult than serving any other asset. And if you're worried about privacy, then serving files locally removes any dependency on a third-party server at all (or two in this case).

There used to be advantage to using global CDNs: you would only need to download each font file once. But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons (“hmm, judging by how fast these ten resources loaded (and how slowly these other thirty resources loaded), you had these ten in your cache; and such-and-such a sensitive site just happens to load those ten resources and none of the rest…”), so…

> But now, browsers don’t share caches between origins for privacy reasons

I didn't heard about this thing until today, are you sure that it is already implemented in all major browsers? I have found this source [1] but for what I can tell, at the moment this feature is behind a flag in chromium and firefox (maybe it is already implemented in Safari).

[1] https://www.jefftk.com/p/shared-cache-is-going-away

Re: Wikimedia FontCDN – an anonymizing, privacy-first reverse proxy to Google Fonts

#30

Post by Nextgrid »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #24
frankzander wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Roboto everywhere? Maybe I have a preference for Lora in the headlines because it goes good with another font in mass text? Fonts are commonly underrated but take a look at some cooperate identities ... you recognize Mercedes every time you see a truck with ads of Mercedes on it because of what? You guessed it right ... fonts. This wouldn't be possible if everyone would use Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman…

If ads are the only use case for fonts, all the more reasons to kill them with fire.

I hate ads as much as everyone else, but branding goes beyond ads and is valuable.
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