Off topic, but does anyone have a thought on what is the best unicode font? That is, a font that includes all the characters for the 30+ most use languages (including all the double byte languages)? I know every system had a default unicode font that any character can fall back to (I was surprised when I was working with Turkish and the font didn't 3 of the Turkish characters so it fell back to the system font for those three. That was the first time that I learned that text is rendered character by character and if the indicated font doesn't have that character then it will keep going through the fall backs before reaching the system font and then falling back to some default no font character found symbol), but what is the best non-system font that also covers the vast majority (by percentage of people) of modern languages?
The Fastest Google Fonts
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Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#82Off topic, but does anyone have a thought on what is the best unicode font? That is, a font that includes all the characters for the 30+ most use languages (including all the double byte languages)? I know every system had a default unicode font that any character can fall back to (I was surprised when I was working with Turkish and the font didn't 3 of the Turkish characters so it fell back to the system font for th…
I think the architectural limitation of many font formats to 65,536 glyphs means that there aren’t really any good mainstream fonts that contain the entirety of Unicode, but families like Noto have multiple separate fonts that cover most of it.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like we need some clarification about what "consistent" means here. If we're talking about having the typography shown to user A look exactly the same as that shown to user B, why does that matter? (And why do the major font rendering differences between Windows and macOS not matter?) If we're talking about having the typography on user A's phone look the same as on user A's desktop, that seems a bit more reas…
> If we're talking about having the typography shown to user A look exactly the same as that shown to user B, why does that matter? Well, I suppose that's a valid question, but it's moving the goalposts. We were talking about having consistent fonts, and I'm claiming it's absolutely possible by using web fonts (after all, that's the reason web fonts exist).
> Well, I suppose that's a valid question, but it's moving the goalposts.
We still haven't figured out where the goalposts started!
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#84Unsafe at any speed.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#85Here's a simple idea for the Chromium team:
Bundle the top 100-200 Google web fonts (in .woff2 format) with Chromium (less than 20-30MBs) and boom, you just accelerated the entire internet.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#86Just 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-fee…
> Variability in system fonts means that getting consistent paragraph and header widths and spacing is impossible.
Everyone is on different screen types. From desktop to mobile, different OS, low to high DPI, different resolutions to screen size (1080p on 21in monitor vs 27in monitor), different font sizes, different brightness/colors/contrasts. Most designers I have worked with have never looked at the site on different kinds of screens. Most designers only care about how it looks on mac.
Windows render font differently compare to Mac/Android. Chrome on windows renders font differently compare to Firefox.
You will never be able to render your site perfectly on all the devices.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#87Faster still would be to skip the request for the CSS altogether by inlining it in the head. Therefore you'd just request the font immediately and directly. This makes the preconnect moot, and should be faster. Faster still is to use already installed fonts, as others have noted. But don't use "system" fonts if that means UI fonts like San Francisco or Segue. Exploit the rich font options on the desktop: Georgia, Sit…
OP here. Inlining CSS won’t work as the request is UA-sniffed.
Modern browsers are smart enough to only download the required file type, sniffing is unnecessary the vast majority of the time and you save an entire 3rd party connection.
There are tools like https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts which will get you the needed css.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#88Here's a simple idea for the Chromium team: Bundle the top 100-200 Google web fonts (in .woff2 format) with Chromium (less than 20-30MBs) and boom, you just accelerated the entire internet.
Firefox's Decentraleyes addon is built on a similar idea: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...
It does not work with fonts as far as I'm aware, but it can serve popular libraries locally, saving bandwidth, and protecting privacy.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#89Does anybody else block fonts? Not only is it wasteful for my mobile data plan, but I just have this suspicion that sooner than later they will be used as a vector for some kind of security issue.
Re: The Fastest Google Fonts
#90Here's a simple idea for the Chromium team: Bundle the top 100-200 Google web fonts (in .woff2 format) with Chromium (less than 20-30MBs) and boom, you just accelerated the entire internet.
What about all that juicy tracking data though?