Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface for text or display • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by earthboundkid » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

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…

I disagree.

At this point, there is no reason to support Yes, if you're making a webapp, there's no good way to do it without JS and you can just be upfront about that. Also, people who can't use ES6+ are going to zero over time, so it's fine to just write ES6. But you should also have a no-JS fallback version of an information page (anything that's not a webapp) because that's an important usecase that won't drop to zero over time.

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

#222

Post by amalcon » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

cheerlessbog wrote: post #184

jimktrains2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That situation does not normally come up, because I stop trusting that site. If a page that just displays documents requires javascript to do so, then clearly the developers were not worthy of my trust.

There are legitimate uses of javascript, but I'm not going to enable it just to look at a document.

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

#223

Post by boterock » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

dimgl wrote: post #149

ComputerGuru wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows does not have crap font rendering, Windows has advanced hinting support that varies by typeface and is infinitely customizable. Other operating systems apply a global hinting that typically discards the font designer's own preferences for how the font should look (especially at smaller scales). Fonts without that manual hinting look like crap on Windows because Windows does not force through its own rendering…

It doesn't matter if Microsoft is really big on typography if it looks like garbage on Windows. I agree with the OP; most open fonts look absolutely horrible on Windows.

This is exactly what I mean, also, if you try to make them look better with that lousy truetype wizard, it tries to make you choose what looks better without any context, and if you pick some wrong choices you fuck up the whole font rendering in the OS, and there is no clear way to revert to defaults... nasty experience nonetheless

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

#224

Post by msla » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

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.

This is wrong, of course, because it requires that people buy expensive hardware to use the latest accessibility technology, which is not generally available. It's like demanding that people buy electric-powered wheelchairs instead of making your building accessible to normal wheelchairs.

> We simply don't support this edge case, and our legal department supports our legal right to do so (in particular in relation to ADA requirements).

And I'm sure that ignoring poor people enables you to sleep very well at night.

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

#225

Post by daveFNbuck » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

Biganon wrote: post #203

dev_dull wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wondering that myself. It makes a BIG difference to me when strings appear out of context. With zeros and Os together it can be very confusing, and the dot or slash makes a big difference.

It's even more confusing WITOUT the O and 0 together... Then you have no way to see which one is slimmer

It's almost always clear in normal text whether you're looking at a word or a number.

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

#226

Post by msla » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

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?

No, for the people who can't afford to upgrade to the latest technology.

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

#227

Post by msla » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

dpcx wrote: post #71

britta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Forest Service worked with 18F on this Open Forest project to enable people to buy Christmas tree permits online, which uses United States Web Design System components: https://openforest.fs.usda.gov/christmas-trees/forests You can learn more about that project here, including the open source code: https://18f.gsa.gov/what-we-deliver/forest-service/ - and a few blog posts about it: https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/forest…

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.

> https://openforest.fs.usda.gov/christmas-trees/forests has a pretty heavy dependency on Javascript

And it doesn't even work with Javascript.

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

#228

Post by boterock » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #44

boterock wrote: post #20

It is sad that any nice font looks like crap with Windows font rendering.

Windows does not have crap font rendering, Windows has advanced hinting support that varies by typeface and is infinitely customizable. Other operating systems apply a global hinting that typically discards the font designer's own preferences for how the font should look (especially at smaller scales). Fonts without that manual hinting look like crap on Windows because Windows does not force through its own rendering…

I would make a distinction between typography and font rendering. MS has some nice type faces, made with a lot of love and care.

But after reading this http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h... you can only conclude that font rendering could be a lot better... I bet it isn't because of 'legacy'

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

#229

Post by UI_at_80x24 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #92

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #48

Looks decent, but "I" "O" and "0" could be improved.

Improved for what use case? This is not a font I'd expect anyone to write code in (to each his own, however.) Context will determine how a particular character is read.

If you are reading conversational english, you are correct that 99% of the time I/O/0/5/S/etc. should be easily apparent. But if this is to be the de facto font used by all government agencies then you get cases where part numbers, serial numbers, legal-case numbers, scientific studies, anything/everything at NASA.

And then there is the military.

Removing ambiguity and uncertainty should be the point.

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

#230

Post by webmaven » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #175

sanderjd wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ~no users curate their fonts, and making your site look better for the ~all users who don't curate their own fonts is the better more pragmatic choice by such a large margin that it isn't really worth much thought. Does this negatively affect your experience? Can't you override fonts if you want to? Edit: note, I'm not the person the question was directed at, and have no connection to the federalist project a…

Every time I've visited a site where I thought, oh that's a terrible font, it's been basically one of these reasons: * Improper selection of default font for constrained display eg tabular * Or the more popular "Let's create a font because we can. It's branding." There are of course other considerations involved like the increasing diversity of rendering devices, but that doesn't make the fact that any web site font…

Properly selected, fonts contribute to the user experience so seamlessly that most users don't even realize that the font used is something out of the ordinary.

This is similar in effect to users liking a site more when it is faster, but attributing the improvement to any number of other things that haven't actually changed.