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Google’s new Font Directory is a Disaster

18 points by arnorhs 16y ago

chaosmachine 16y ago
So, one font doesn't render quite right at a certain size in a certain browser? Not sure I'd call that a disaster. "I don’t have a clue how they expect to make money from this or why they wanted to create the directory in the first place" I'll tell you why: To encourage the use of plain text instead of images. Every time a webmaster uses Google's font directory instead of resorting to an image file, Google's job gets easier.
- silentOpen 16y ago
  It also puts a Google resource hit on lots of pages -- Google gives you fonts, you give it usage data. Edit: This is probably not useful to them, actually, due to caching. However, it is their prerogative at any time to change their resource behavior and start receiving every request.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    However, it is their prerogative at any time to change their resource behavior and start receiving every request. Anyone concerned about this will just copy the result to their own server, right?
  - petervandijck 16y ago
    Man this argument gets really old, particularly when you have to use some old crappy expensive analytics tool because "we don't want to give Google our data", or when corporate IT doesn't allow you to use Google docs (it's the same argument). Just cranky.
- arnorhs 16y ago
  Actually, that wasn't a carefully selected size. I tried a few fonts in a few sizes, but all of the ones I tried looked like that in smaller sizes. They look fine for headings and such, but not when used for readable text.
- pilif 16y ago
  it's not one font. It's all of them under windows. Google does something to the fonts so that the Windows font rendering system isn't able to properly anti-alias them any more. On the mac it works fine.
- VMG 16y ago
  There could be other motivations. One more sinister is that they use it to track even more visitors, one more altruistic is that they just do it to improve the web.
  - petervandijck 16y ago
    How about just getting bonus points from developers? That's a strong motivation, I do heaps of stuff to just get some extra bonus points from my wife, same principle. Neither sinister nor altruistic, just plain old what's-best-for-google. And the way they aligned themselves with the web, what's-best-for-google tends to regularly be good for us too, although not always.
- lwhi 16y ago
  No decent front-end web-developer would use an image to display text without making use of an image-replacement technique. This is a platform demo - in the same vein as Typekit. If the model and platform works, Google will be able to sell typography direct to developers.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    And how much of the web is built by "decent front-end web-developer[s]"?
    - lwhi 16y ago
      I can see the benefit Google gains from increased usage of plain text - but I can't see how this can be a main driver for their decision to launch this platform. The web is progressing towards native support of @font-face. This is an intermediate step that will get us there - and, imo, it's also a way that Google could potentially experiment with selling font IP as a service. I say this largely because it would possibly dovetail with their efforts to sell IP via their recently announced app-store. I don't think many websites display their text solely using images (without use of image replacement techniques) - though maybe I'm wrong? Even non-decent front-end developers have an incentive to use IR; largely because Google's desire to index corresponds with most site owner's desire to be found.
- bd 16y ago
  Disaster is probably too strong word, but given current browser and operating system share Google's new fonts are much less useful than they appear to be. Despite what it may look like according to most vocal people on the web, great majority of people still use Windows. New Google fonts look noticeably worse than default fonts on all browsers in Windows XP/Vista/7. Well rendered old fonts are still much nicer than ugly rendered new fonts. Which means if you will use these new Google fonts, user experience for majority of your visitors is going to be worse than before (unless your visitors are heavily skewed toward OSX or Linux).
tzury 16y ago
why is he having a different result than the one at: http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Vollkorn http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Vollkorn there must be something wrong in the usage, sine at google code site the font is rendered smoothly.
- arnorhs 16y ago
  Actually, it's not rendered smoothly at all - when you take a look at the smallest size on google's site, this is what you see: http://twitpic.com/1pd6id http://twitpic.com/1pd6id edit: This seems to only be an issue with the way Windows renders fonts. The fonts look awesome in Ubuntu or Mac systems
  - ianbishop 16y ago
    It does render smoothly: http://grab.by/4tF8 http://grab.by/4tF8 This must be a browser issue. I am running Safari 4.0.5(6531.22.7)
    - arnorhs 16y ago
      Wow, that looks really nice. Are you running Safari in a Mac?
      - ianbishop 16y ago
        Yup! 10.6.3
  - tzury 16y ago
    this is my screenshot Ubuntu+Chrome - http://yfrog.com/3uscreenshotvollkornfontfp http://yfrog.com/3uscreenshotvollkornfontfp smooth and sweet. all seems fine. it seems like windows issue more than google issue.
    - arnorhs 16y ago
      yes that's a point, but if the font is well made (like the example font from font squirrel) the font looks much better. Even though it's fine on your computer, it's not fine at all on windows machines
phoboslab 16y ago
This article is a waste of time, imho. All it says is "this one font looks bad on my (not specified) system, in my (not specified) browser." It compares three completely different fonts - one of which is professionally crafted, whereas the other two are "hobbyist" works. The rendering quality of his test cases has nothing to do with the method these fonts were embedded. Anyway, Windows XP is the biggest source for this kind of problems, as you can see in this chart: http://typophile.com/node/70216 http://typophile.com/node/70216
- arnorhs 16y ago
  That's a good point. I'm using Win XP and the font gets rendered the same way on both Chrome 5 and FF 3.6.3 I can't see how you're going to blame this whole issue on Windows, when other fonts in the same operating system get rendered much better in smaller sizes.
  - phoboslab 16y ago
    Many of the Windows fonts have some special "Font Hinting" built in, which specifies how to exactly render the font in small sizes. This is important for systems, where there is no automatic Anti Aliasing in place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting Creating such a Font Hinting is, from my understanding, quite a tedious task and became unnecessary for newer systems. Most fonts that don't come along with Windows, simply don't have this hinting built in anymore.
arnorhs 16y ago
This problem seems to only affect Windows machines. On Macs and Ubuntu machines the fonts look fine: http://grab.by/4tF8 http://grab.by/4tF8 This problem is also only apparent on smaller text sizes. As soon as the font gets bigger, as for headings, the fonts look fine.
bennysaurus 16y ago
The issue is ClearType - turn it off, refresh your browser and it will render properly. Something somewhere needs fixing up obviously but it doesn't look to be with the engine Google is using to put the font on the page.
10tlock 16y ago
Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!? Doctor: Then do not do that!
barrkel 16y ago
Due to the readability troubles custom fonts can cause, I have them disabled in Firefox with about:config's gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled setting set to false. Too often has the "stylish" choice sacrificed readability while aiming for a fashionable look.
chime 16y ago
To make the font-smoother on XP etc., add this CSS: text-shadow: #fff 0 0 1px;
- barake 16y ago
  Does this screw up font smoothing on *nix or OS X? Now someone just needs to figure out how to get IE to play nice.
almost 16y ago
s/is a Disaster/doesn't seem to work right for me at the moment/

18 points by arnorhs 16y ago

So, one font doesn't render quite right at a certain size in a certain browser? Not sure I'd call that a disaster. "I don’t have a clue how they expect to make money from this or why they wanted to create the directory in the first place" I'll tell you why: To encourage the use of plain text instead of images. Every time a webmaster uses Google's font directory instead of resorting to an image file, Google's job gets easier.

silentOpen 16y ago
It also puts a Google resource hit on lots of pages -- Google gives you fonts, you give it usage data. Edit: This is probably not useful to them, actually, due to caching. However, it is their prerogative at any time to change their resource behavior and start receiving every request.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  However, it is their prerogative at any time to change their resource behavior and start receiving every request. Anyone concerned about this will just copy the result to their own server, right?
- petervandijck 16y ago
  Man this argument gets really old, particularly when you have to use some old crappy expensive analytics tool because "we don't want to give Google our data", or when corporate IT doesn't allow you to use Google docs (it's the same argument). Just cranky.
arnorhs 16y ago
Actually, that wasn't a carefully selected size. I tried a few fonts in a few sizes, but all of the ones I tried looked like that in smaller sizes. They look fine for headings and such, but not when used for readable text.
pilif 16y ago
it's not one font. It's all of them under windows. Google does something to the fonts so that the Windows font rendering system isn't able to properly anti-alias them any more. On the mac it works fine.
VMG 16y ago
There could be other motivations. One more sinister is that they use it to track even more visitors, one more altruistic is that they just do it to improve the web.
- petervandijck 16y ago
  How about just getting bonus points from developers? That's a strong motivation, I do heaps of stuff to just get some extra bonus points from my wife, same principle. Neither sinister nor altruistic, just plain old what's-best-for-google. And the way they aligned themselves with the web, what's-best-for-google tends to regularly be good for us too, although not always.
lwhi 16y ago
No decent front-end web-developer would use an image to display text without making use of an image-replacement technique. This is a platform demo - in the same vein as Typekit. If the model and platform works, Google will be able to sell typography direct to developers.
- scott_s 16y ago
  And how much of the web is built by "decent front-end web-developer[s]"?
  - lwhi 16y ago
    I can see the benefit Google gains from increased usage of plain text - but I can't see how this can be a main driver for their decision to launch this platform. The web is progressing towards native support of @font-face. This is an intermediate step that will get us there - and, imo, it's also a way that Google could potentially experiment with selling font IP as a service. I say this largely because it would possibly dovetail with their efforts to sell IP via their recently announced app-store. I don't think many websites display their text solely using images (without use of image replacement techniques) - though maybe I'm wrong? Even non-decent front-end developers have an incentive to use IR; largely because Google's desire to index corresponds with most site owner's desire to be found.
bd 16y ago
Disaster is probably too strong word, but given current browser and operating system share Google's new fonts are much less useful than they appear to be. Despite what it may look like according to most vocal people on the web, great majority of people still use Windows. New Google fonts look noticeably worse than default fonts on all browsers in Windows XP/Vista/7. Well rendered old fonts are still much nicer than ugly rendered new fonts. Which means if you will use these new Google fonts, user experience for majority of your visitors is going to be worse than before (unless your visitors are heavily skewed toward OSX or Linux).

tzury 16y ago

why is he having a different result than the one at: http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Vollkorn http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Vollkorn there must be something wrong in the usage, sine at google code site the font is rendered smoothly.

arnorhs 16y ago
Actually, it's not rendered smoothly at all - when you take a look at the smallest size on google's site, this is what you see: http://twitpic.com/1pd6id http://twitpic.com/1pd6id edit: This seems to only be an issue with the way Windows renders fonts. The fonts look awesome in Ubuntu or Mac systems
- ianbishop 16y ago
  It does render smoothly: http://grab.by/4tF8 http://grab.by/4tF8 This must be a browser issue. I am running Safari 4.0.5(6531.22.7)
  - arnorhs 16y ago
    Wow, that looks really nice. Are you running Safari in a Mac?
    - ianbishop 16y ago
      Yup! 10.6.3
- tzury 16y ago
  this is my screenshot Ubuntu+Chrome - http://yfrog.com/3uscreenshotvollkornfontfp http://yfrog.com/3uscreenshotvollkornfontfp smooth and sweet. all seems fine. it seems like windows issue more than google issue.
  - arnorhs 16y ago
    yes that's a point, but if the font is well made (like the example font from font squirrel) the font looks much better. Even though it's fine on your computer, it's not fine at all on windows machines

phoboslab 16y ago

This article is a waste of time, imho. All it says is "this one font looks bad on my (not specified) system, in my (not specified) browser." It compares three completely different fonts - one of which is professionally crafted, whereas the other two are "hobbyist" works. The rendering quality of his test cases has nothing to do with the method these fonts were embedded. Anyway, Windows XP is the biggest source for this kind of problems, as you can see in this chart: http://typophile.com/node/70216 http://typophile.com/node/70216

arnorhs 16y ago
That's a good point. I'm using Win XP and the font gets rendered the same way on both Chrome 5 and FF 3.6.3 I can't see how you're going to blame this whole issue on Windows, when other fonts in the same operating system get rendered much better in smaller sizes.
- phoboslab 16y ago
  Many of the Windows fonts have some special "Font Hinting" built in, which specifies how to exactly render the font in small sizes. This is important for systems, where there is no automatic Anti Aliasing in place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting Creating such a Font Hinting is, from my understanding, quite a tedious task and became unnecessary for newer systems. Most fonts that don't come along with Windows, simply don't have this hinting built in anymore.

arnorhs 16y ago

This problem seems to only affect Windows machines. On Macs and Ubuntu machines the fonts look fine: http://grab.by/4tF8 http://grab.by/4tF8 This problem is also only apparent on smaller text sizes. As soon as the font gets bigger, as for headings, the fonts look fine.

bennysaurus 16y ago

The issue is ClearType - turn it off, refresh your browser and it will render properly. Something somewhere needs fixing up obviously but it doesn't look to be with the engine Google is using to put the font on the page.

10tlock 16y ago

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!? Doctor: Then do not do that!

barrkel 16y ago

Due to the readability troubles custom fonts can cause, I have them disabled in Firefox with about:config's gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled setting set to false. Too often has the "stylish" choice sacrificed readability while aiming for a fashionable look.

chime 16y ago

To make the font-smoother on XP etc., add this CSS: text-shadow: #fff 0 0 1px;

barake 16y ago
Does this screw up font smoothing on *nix or OS X? Now someone just needs to figure out how to get IE to play nice.

almost 16y ago

s/is a Disaster/doesn't seem to work right for me at the moment/