4 ms·

Using the bandwidth and batteries you didn't pay for.

detritus 8y ago
haha, ok? That's a bit of an ambitious stretch towards a counterpoint, but I'll bite — You pay for the bandwidth you choose to consume (assuming you're on a metred connection), I pay for the bandwidth on the content I choose to deliver (assuming I run a server), but ultimately you choose what to consume — you have every right not to not even bother with my content and its gorgeous choice of font. Heck, if I've done my job properly, you can nix all my styling and read my content as you wish, but that's your palava. As for your battery - I'll plant a tree and say a small prayer for its sacrifice.
- basch 8y ago
  By default, unless you NEED web fonts, why not just be respectful and use system fonts. Using web fonts us unnecessary for the bulk of websites. Every system has a helvetica/arial and georgia/baskerville family. Build a strong font family, and use webfonts sparingly when spacing and consistency are actually important. Why bloat bandwidth and page speeds for little gain.
  - detritus 8y ago
    'Respectful' to what exactly? And what if I want to use Garamond? Your stance makes no sense beyond your own peculiar prejudice. - ed Again, if YOU don't like MY content the way YOU want it - then YOU make the effort to change it as to how YOU want. Anything else is simply, well - disrespectful - as you choose to imply.
    - basch 8y ago
      Why cant you use system fonts by default, unless you need to use a web font? Youre making web fonts the first, go to choice, in call cases.
      - detritus 8y ago
        Evidently you have your own thoughts on this, so it's pointless me bantering away - but why can't and why shouldn't I make my choice my default? If I set up the stylesheet to have an order of preference, with a fallback to default system fonts that mangle my considered layout, then you're perfectly free to do what you will - but again (and we're going around in circles here) - it's my content, I'd rather like to display it as I wish. Look, I'll be honest - there are times and situations where I wish there were still properly text based browsers that could read web content (assuming it's been marked up well enough in the first place) and display it in green-glowing monospaced terminal text - but there aren't. The world's moved on - I'm sorry you don't like it.
  - detritus 8y ago
    As an aside, I spent a good 4 hours of my life the other week learning how to use FontForge to strip out all the extraneous glyphs from an Open Version of Garamond and saving into a WOFF format file for a website, resulting in a 64Kb file. This because a) I'm not happy with Google tracking my users and b) I've been professionally making websites since the mid to late 90s and so started off in a world where an entire site came in at under <100kb, images included. I'm not one to needlessly and unthinkingly throw up excess pageweight

haha, ok? That's a bit of an ambitious stretch towards a counterpoint, but I'll bite — You pay for the bandwidth you choose to consume (assuming you're on a metred connection), I pay for the bandwidth on the content I choose to deliver (assuming I run a server), but ultimately you choose what to consume — you have every right not to not even bother with my content and its gorgeous choice of font. Heck, if I've done my job properly, you can nix all my styling and read my content as you wish, but that's your palava. As for your battery - I'll plant a tree and say a small prayer for its sacrifice.

basch 8y ago
By default, unless you NEED web fonts, why not just be respectful and use system fonts. Using web fonts us unnecessary for the bulk of websites. Every system has a helvetica/arial and georgia/baskerville family. Build a strong font family, and use webfonts sparingly when spacing and consistency are actually important. Why bloat bandwidth and page speeds for little gain.
- detritus 8y ago
  'Respectful' to what exactly? And what if I want to use Garamond? Your stance makes no sense beyond your own peculiar prejudice. - ed Again, if YOU don't like MY content the way YOU want it - then YOU make the effort to change it as to how YOU want. Anything else is simply, well - disrespectful - as you choose to imply.
  - basch 8y ago
    Why cant you use system fonts by default, unless you need to use a web font? Youre making web fonts the first, go to choice, in call cases.
    - detritus 8y ago
      Evidently you have your own thoughts on this, so it's pointless me bantering away - but why can't and why shouldn't I make my choice my default? If I set up the stylesheet to have an order of preference, with a fallback to default system fonts that mangle my considered layout, then you're perfectly free to do what you will - but again (and we're going around in circles here) - it's my content, I'd rather like to display it as I wish. Look, I'll be honest - there are times and situations where I wish there were still properly text based browsers that could read web content (assuming it's been marked up well enough in the first place) and display it in green-glowing monospaced terminal text - but there aren't. The world's moved on - I'm sorry you don't like it.
- detritus 8y ago
  As an aside, I spent a good 4 hours of my life the other week learning how to use FontForge to strip out all the extraneous glyphs from an Open Version of Garamond and saving into a WOFF format file for a website, resulting in a 64Kb file. This because a) I'm not happy with Google tracking my users and b) I've been professionally making websites since the mid to late 90s and so started off in a world where an entire site came in at under <100kb, images included. I'm not one to needlessly and unthinkingly throw up excess pageweight