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The "cleaner" feel may well be to do with better font rendering for desktop fonts, because you'll be using something like TTF rather than WOFF. Web font files h
by frereubu 6y ago
The "cleaner" feel may well be to do with better font rendering for desktop fonts, because you'll be using something like TTF rather than WOFF. Web font files have to trade off file size for quality, which desktop fonts don't have to do.
- Freak_NL 6y agoThat's not it. WOFF is just a container format for OpenType and TrueType fonts with better compression and some metadata. WOFF has nothing to do with rendering. You can achieve the exact same rendering with a WOFF file as you can with TTF; the contents are the same.
- frereubu 6y agoWell, TIL about it being a container. But do they really contain an identical amount of information for font rendering? I'm no font expert, but I do know that you can have more or less information in a font file that affects how it's rendered.
- p_l 6y agoYes, it's just an Open Type file. The usual omitted stuff is subsetting a bigger font to include only certain glyphs you need, usually you don't mutilate font by removing rendering data from glyphs.
- jfk13 6y agoYes, it's just a container for the exact same data that an OpenType font holds. On the other hand, it's possible that in the course of deployment, various things may be dropped from the original font resource: not just subsetting (reducing the repertoire of supported characters), but in some cases also OpenType features (e.g. ligatures or contextual forms), and in some cases hinting is stripped. If that is done, the webfont version may indeed appear differently than the original "desktop" font, depending on local font-rendering settings.
- andybak 6y agoWhat lunatic would strip hinting!? Is this really done?
- da_big_ghey 6y agoMea culpa, I've done this once before. I work on a small 4k screen so I couldn't tell the difference, though others pointed it out and I fixed it. I was trying to eke out that last bit of performance.
- jfk13 6y agoYes - after all, it makes the font resource smaller. (And if the designer is working on a Mac, they won't notice any difference.)
- ben-schaaf 6y agoBoth Firefox and Chrome use their own font rendering, regardless of whether you're using system fonts or not.
- zinekeller 6y agoCategorically not true in Firefox in default settings, usually disabled by websites in Chrome by using the CSS property "text-rendering: optimizeLegibility" (unless you are somehow in macOS which in this case the default preference is to optimize for precision systemwide anyway).
- corty 6y agoMost free fonts are rather poor quality. Most font designers seem to publish web fonts for free as an advertisement for their services or print font products they sell. As a consequence, while the sample sentence might look great, the feeling when reading is poor. Especially screen optimisation is lacking, which is what distinguishes the usual fonts you get with your OS (like Arial or Roboto) from stuff you would buy for print (like Helvetica). Also, people tend to pick more fancy fonts to set themselves apart, which of course decreases readability even with very good fonts: you can just read fonts faster if you are used to them, uncommon ones slow you down and feel uncomfortable for long texts.
- anoncake 6y agoFont designers publish poor quality fonts to promote their products? That isn't supposed to work.
- rangibaby 6y agoYou’re underestimating how much work and skill it takes to make a good font, even for a great designer, so type foundries like to lock good fonts up behind rent-seeking license agreements.
- colonwqbang 6y agoSelling fonts is not rent-seeking. Rent-seeking would be if Google demanded money from a font designer to let their fonts be "compatible" with Chrome. I.e. Pay me or I'll make sure your product doesn't work with my product. App stores is a common example; pay Apple or they'll make sure your software doesn't run on the iPhone.
- marcosdumay 6y agoThose fonts are never simply "sold". The most usual is that you'll have to pay a certain price up-front (or monthly), and some more for each access. The odds are also good that you won't be able to host the font yourself, because well, the foundry has to count those access, doesn't it? And if you want the foundry to respond any quickly, you better pay some extra.
- bzb6 6y agoThe cleaner look is because most designers use macOS which renders most fonts in a way that makes them all look good (let’s not get into technical details). On Windows the same fonts might look like shit (for example some parts of a character are thicker than the rest for no apparent reason)
- corty 6y agoWell, good is relative. MacOS renders fonts in a weight-and-form-correct way which makes them look blurry however. Windows renders fonts in a weight-and-form-incorrect way, which however makes them sharper and easier to read on screens, especially with resolutions below 200dpi. Now if you use a high-resolution monitor and print-optimized fonts, MacOS will look better. If you use a low-resolution monitor and screen-optimized fonts, Windows will look better. Problem is, most designers come from print and use expensive Mac gear, so they are designing for a minority, their peers, not their users.
- saurik 6y agoDesigners primarily designing for other designers is a core problem with the entire field of design and it holds back a lot of society as it seems to really encourage apps having super low information density displays with slow animations.
- alisonkisk 6y ago> Problem is, most designers come from print and use This can't still be true. No one comes from print anymore.
- zinekeller 6y ago> This can't still be true. No one comes from print anymore. It is. The real problem is that a large number of designers like to have a pixel-perfect experience (which on print doesn't really matter as they know what paper will that publication use).
- barrkel 6y ago
- swiley 6y agoDon't tell people this, they'll start making larger fonts.