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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.

by rvern 10y ago

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 https://clbin.com/bFSlHF.png

captn3m0 10y ago
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 https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts
cpu 10y ago
> 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.
flukus 10y ago
What happens when sites are using font's for images?
- ori_b 10y ago
  Then it breaks. I can deal with that -- there aren't very many sites that decide to abuse fonts that way, in any case. And who knows, maybe one day SVG will actually reliably render correctly in browsers, and people will use images when they want to display images
  - err4nt 10y ago
    The problem isnt so much SVG rendering, its that you can grab an icon font with 400 icons that look great, its easy to add them to places beside text, like in menus or on buttons. You can use SVG, but there is no CDN-hosted SVG sprite with 400 icons to replace things like FontAwesome or Ionicons, so you would have to find all the SVGs you wanted. Then you have the challenge of getting them the right size and position beside text in very tight spaces.
    - ori_b 10y ago
      You mean like this: https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/ https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/?
      - flukus 10y ago
        Are there any frameworks like bootstrap that include SVGs?
- cpeterso 10y ago
  I think the reverse would be a bigger problem: with a limited selection of user-controlled fonts, web designers would use images for fonts, which would be terrible for accessibility and usability.
2bitencryption 10y ago
But that's my favorite part of mobile browsing! Load the page, start reading an article, scrolling as you read. Then the CSS styling kicks in, knocking you back to the top of the page, or worse -- somewhere else entirely, who knows where. So you take some time to figure out where you left off and continue reading again. But then the font loads. And that shifts everything again. And now you're in the middle of the fourth paragraph when before you were reading the third.

by rvern 10y ago

captn3m0 10y ago

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 https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts

cpu 10y ago

> 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.

flukus 10y ago

What happens when sites are using font's for images?

ori_b 10y ago
Then it breaks. I can deal with that -- there aren't very many sites that decide to abuse fonts that way, in any case. And who knows, maybe one day SVG will actually reliably render correctly in browsers, and people will use images when they want to display images
- err4nt 10y ago
  The problem isnt so much SVG rendering, its that you can grab an icon font with 400 icons that look great, its easy to add them to places beside text, like in menus or on buttons. You can use SVG, but there is no CDN-hosted SVG sprite with 400 icons to replace things like FontAwesome or Ionicons, so you would have to find all the SVGs you wanted. Then you have the challenge of getting them the right size and position beside text in very tight spaces.
  - ori_b 10y ago
    You mean like this: https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/ https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/?
    - flukus 10y ago
      Are there any frameworks like bootstrap that include SVGs?
cpeterso 10y ago
I think the reverse would be a bigger problem: with a limited selection of user-controlled fonts, web designers would use images for fonts, which would be terrible for accessibility and usability.

2bitencryption 10y ago

But that's my favorite part of mobile browsing! Load the page, start reading an article, scrolling as you read. Then the CSS styling kicks in, knocking you back to the top of the page, or worse -- somewhere else entirely, who knows where. So you take some time to figure out where you left off and continue reading again. But then the font loads. And that shifts everything again. And now you're in the middle of the fourth paragraph when before you were reading the third.