5 ms·

I think web fonts are massively overused. Sticking with the user's configured selections are better unless there are very strong reasons you need to over-ride

I think web fonts are massively overused. Sticking with the user's configured selections are better unless there are very strong reasons you need to over-ride them. It's extra resources, time, and complexity spent on forcing something on the visitor that in most situations they don't want or care about.

zzo38computer 5y ago
I agree. (The document may specify what language the text is in and whether or not fix-pitch is wanted; the user settings should then be used to determine what font that is.) Actually, I generally would usually avoid CSS entirely, since the user's styles are generally more suitable. (The "font-display" setting is also a setting that the user might want to change even if font downloading is enabled. My idea of "meta-CSS" would give you this and many other things for free. Meta-CSS would not inherently allow the timing to be adjusted, but it is a feature that can be added too if it is wanted.) Another thing that I might want is to enable the document to specify its own fonts if it is SVG or PDF, but to disallow HTML documents from specifying their own fonts.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  > Actually, I generally would usually avoid CSS entirely, since the user's styles are generally more suitable. I very much doubt that's true for the average user, who will simply be using the browser's built-in default – which to an not inconsiderable extent is rather constrained by backwards compatibility concerns rather than being truly optimised for usage as "the only stylesheet you'll ever need". Besides, even with a boring plain old homepage-and-definitively-not-a-web-app it's not too difficult to run into the limitations of what you can achieve without some custom styling even purely in terms of basic layouting and typography.
vbernat 5y ago
I always find builtin fonts difficult to pair when you want to use monospace for code. If you take Times New Roman and Courier New for example, Courier New is quite larger visually, so you would need to use a smaller point size for it. But how to do that when you need to handle fallbacks? On my blog, I am pairing Merriweather with a custom version of Iosevka to match x-height and ascendant height. I think this is less disturbing when reading.
- jraph 5y ago
  For me, this is a bug of the OS or the browser. On my OS, Noto Sans is the default sans-serif font and Noto Mono the default monospace font and they pair impeccably. Whatever font you are telling my browser to use will probably be worse for me (at least because of the loading time, and because it is actually hard to match the readability of Noto in my opinion). It's unfortunate Courier New is both so badly different from the regular fonts (and so bad at all, by the way) and also the default on Windows.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Courier New, with all its unfortunate quirks, is there for a reason, AFAICT. It copies the typewriter font metrics. There are many situations where texts are measured by the number of "standard typewriter" characters and lines, established like 100 years ago. Using Courier New for code samples is not a great idea. I think it comes from the times when good monospace fonts did not yet exist. I always change this default, andvi wish browsers somehow stopped clinging to it.
  - vbernat 5y ago
    Unfortunately, most people won't change their browser defaults. It doesn't mean they won't be annoyed by the bad visuals.
542458 5y ago
I think this argument falls apart here: “the user's *configured* selections”. 99%+ of users don’t configure anything and just have the browser’s defaults. This isn’t because they love the defaults, it’s because they don’t know/care that you can configure things.
- waheoo 5y ago
  So your argument for displaying sites in fonts users don't care about is that the user doesn't care about fonts? Why not just let system designers choose the fonts their users are subjected to by default. At least they seem to care more about accessibility than XYZ.coms marketing department.
  - 542458 5y ago
    As a user, I might not change the config because: * I don’t know there’s a config at all * I know there’s a config, but I don’t know enough about fonts to make a good choice * Most sites override my config anyways (unless I chose an even more aggressive config that breaks websites), so why would I care? * The idea of some site specifying a font does not bother me, even if it’s a web font that will cause an extra 25kb of download. For what it’s worth, I really like fonts and know my way around the Firefox config, but I honestly do not care enough to change the default font because of the last two items on that list.
    - majewsky 5y ago
      * I know there's a config, but I'm not on my own machine * I know there's a config, but this is my work machine and corporate IT has blocked the browser prefs dialog via group policy

zzo38computer 5y ago

I agree. (The document may specify what language the text is in and whether or not fix-pitch is wanted; the user settings should then be used to determine what font that is.) Actually, I generally would usually avoid CSS entirely, since the user's styles are generally more suitable. (The "font-display" setting is also a setting that the user might want to change even if font downloading is enabled. My idea of "meta-CSS" would give you this and many other things for free. Meta-CSS would not inherently allow the timing to be adjusted, but it is a feature that can be added too if it is wanted.) Another thing that I might want is to enable the document to specify its own fonts if it is SVG or PDF, but to disallow HTML documents from specifying their own fonts.

iggldiggl 5y ago
> Actually, I generally would usually avoid CSS entirely, since the user's styles are generally more suitable. I very much doubt that's true for the average user, who will simply be using the browser's built-in default – which to an not inconsiderable extent is rather constrained by backwards compatibility concerns rather than being truly optimised for usage as "the only stylesheet you'll ever need". Besides, even with a boring plain old homepage-and-definitively-not-a-web-app it's not too difficult to run into the limitations of what you can achieve without some custom styling even purely in terms of basic layouting and typography.

vbernat 5y ago

I always find builtin fonts difficult to pair when you want to use monospace for code. If you take Times New Roman and Courier New for example, Courier New is quite larger visually, so you would need to use a smaller point size for it. But how to do that when you need to handle fallbacks? On my blog, I am pairing Merriweather with a custom version of Iosevka to match x-height and ascendant height. I think this is less disturbing when reading.

jraph 5y ago
For me, this is a bug of the OS or the browser. On my OS, Noto Sans is the default sans-serif font and Noto Mono the default monospace font and they pair impeccably. Whatever font you are telling my browser to use will probably be worse for me (at least because of the loading time, and because it is actually hard to match the readability of Noto in my opinion). It's unfortunate Courier New is both so badly different from the regular fonts (and so bad at all, by the way) and also the default on Windows.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Courier New, with all its unfortunate quirks, is there for a reason, AFAICT. It copies the typewriter font metrics. There are many situations where texts are measured by the number of "standard typewriter" characters and lines, established like 100 years ago. Using Courier New for code samples is not a great idea. I think it comes from the times when good monospace fonts did not yet exist. I always change this default, andvi wish browsers somehow stopped clinging to it.
- vbernat 5y ago
  Unfortunately, most people won't change their browser defaults. It doesn't mean they won't be annoyed by the bad visuals.

542458 5y ago

I think this argument falls apart here: “the user's *configured* selections”. 99%+ of users don’t configure anything and just have the browser’s defaults. This isn’t because they love the defaults, it’s because they don’t know/care that you can configure things.

waheoo 5y ago
So your argument for displaying sites in fonts users don't care about is that the user doesn't care about fonts? Why not just let system designers choose the fonts their users are subjected to by default. At least they seem to care more about accessibility than XYZ.coms marketing department.
- 542458 5y ago
  As a user, I might not change the config because: * I don’t know there’s a config at all * I know there’s a config, but I don’t know enough about fonts to make a good choice * Most sites override my config anyways (unless I chose an even more aggressive config that breaks websites), so why would I care? * The idea of some site specifying a font does not bother me, even if it’s a web font that will cause an extra 25kb of download. For what it’s worth, I really like fonts and know my way around the Firefox config, but I honestly do not care enough to change the default font because of the last two items on that list.
  - majewsky 5y ago
    * I know there's a config, but I'm not on my own machine * I know there's a config, but this is my work machine and corporate IT has blocked the browser prefs dialog via group policy