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GitHub.com font changed

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Re: GitHub.com font changed

#6

    apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"
    Helvetica, arial, nimbussansl, liberationsans, freesans, clean, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"
    sans-serif
Seems like they're just trying to use whatever decent sans-serif font is available.

Re: GitHub.com font changed

#7
One of the most useful options in Firefox is the checkbox "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"[1], also available as browser.display.use_document_fonts in about:config. When this is unchecked, Firefox will ignore all fonts specified by web pages and just use the much-more-likely-to-be-reasonable choice of default font you have made; and you can then disable web fonts, which will make pages load faster.

I don't think allowing websites to use specific font names in CSS was ever a good idea. It would have been better to limit them to predefined family names, which would map to fonts the user could customize. In any case, this allows me not to care about the whims of website designers and to always have text in a readable font. Only one issue: one of the unfortunate trends in web design is to use web fonts for icons. Not allowing websites to specify different fonts from the default also happens to break the icons. This isn't enough of a big deal for me to disable the option, but it's an annoyance worth knowing about.

[1]: https://clbin.com/bFSlHF.png

Re: GitHub.com font changed

#8
post #7

One of the most useful options in Firefox is the checkbox "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"[1], also available as browser.display.use_document_fonts in about:config. When this is unchecked, Firefox will ignore all fonts specified by web pages and just use the much-more-likely-to-be-reasonable choice of default font you have made; and you can then disable web fonts, which will mak…

I have an extension that (tries to) do the same thing for Chrome [0]. I mostly wrote it when I had a metered connection and wanted faster access.

[0]: https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts

Re: GitHub.com font changed

#9
post #7

One of the most useful options in Firefox is the checkbox "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"[1], also available as browser.display.use_document_fonts in about:config. When this is unchecked, Firefox will ignore all fonts specified by web pages and just use the much-more-likely-to-be-reasonable choice of default font you have made; and you can then disable web fonts, which will mak…

> I don't think allowing websites to use specific font names in CSS was ever a good idea.

I'm with you there. I can't help feeling babied when I visit most websites these days, for more reasons than simply the commonplace (over)use of web fonts.

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