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Twitter's new font, Chirp, is apparently giving some users headaches
- userbinator 5y agoThis is what user stylesheets were intended to solve. Too bad the majority browsers have gone down the path of attempting to remove all customisation.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoUser stylesheets are a relic of Web 1.0, when the web was a series of hyperlinked documents. The transformation from web page to web application was not compatible with things like user stylesheets.
- amelius 5y agoYeah, most stylesheets nowadays look like they are generated by a compiler. Certainly not human-readable.
- kixiQu 5y agoThe business model where you need to stop your users from hiding ads was not compatible with things like user stylesheets. If CSS compilation didn't obfuscate class names and such, it'd be quite compatible.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoOh yeah I don’t mean there’s a technological reason it’s not possible, it’s just at odds with the new controlling faction of the web. Time was the web was for everyone, and enthusiasts were the main stakeholders. Now the web is just another marketplace run by corporations.
- _pmf_ 5y agoI cannot even install fonts on Android.
- ceejayoz 5y agoI don't blame the browsers, really. Look at the source code of Twitter or Facebook. It's intentionally obfuscated and mangled, probably in part to fuck with ad blockers. I have a few user stylesheets (even a little custom Firefox extension to block one user's comments on a site I frequent), but the sites I'd really like to use them on largely don't make it possible to do so. Look at a Facebook ad in your browser's web inspector, for example. The "Sponsored" tag is made up of 31 different randomly named span tags. https://imgur.com/a/AHZL8ko https://imgur.com/a/AHZL8ko
- sli 5y ago* { font-family: 'Verdana, sans-serif !important' }
- ceejayoz 5y agoSure, and I can do that, at least in Firefox. https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-can-i-override-the-css-of-a-site-in-firefox-with-usercontent-css https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-can-i-override-th...
- pdkl95 5y agoIt took a while to setup, but fixing the problem in the font rendering layer has worked really well. Several years ago - after being annoyed by blurry/bad fonts, extremely bad hinting, and other font problems - I spent a few weeks investigating the way fonts are rendered and a few more weeks comparing many different fonts and various permutations of rendering/hinting methods. The result of all that work included a set of fontconfig files with long lists like this; <fontconfig> <alias> <family>Arial</family> <prefer><family>Ubuntu</family></prefer> </alias> <alias> <family>Helvetica</family> <prefer><family>Ubuntu</family></prefer> </alias> <!-- Many more aliases that --> <!-- force fonts to Ubuntu. --> <alias> <family>sans-serif</family> <prefer><family>Ubuntu</family></prefer> </alias> </fontconfig> This way, my font overrides happen in any software that uses fontconfig (i.e. most X11 software that uses TrueType fonts). $ fc-match Helvetica Ubuntu-R.ttf: "Ubuntu" "Regular" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28typeface%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28typeface%29
- micromacrofoot 5y agoEven with user stylesheets targeting elements reliably on social networks is a nightmare. We're approaching a future where the markup isn't even human readable.
- megous 5y agoYou don't need to use website font's. You can configure the browser to use your chosen fonts. It's a normal accessibility option on the browser config page. The only problem is devs who use fonts for icons, which is as stupid as it sounds. https://megous.com/dl/tmp/0199107a482b8f75.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/0199107a482b8f75.png (It would be nice to also have minimum font weight setting, not just minimum size, because some designers just can't be helped and use <=200. Then most of the issues with typography on the web would be solved.)
- classichasclass 5y agoI remember when Chirp was the Twitter Developer Conference. Those were very different days.
- mg 5y agoAn easy way to customize a websites appearance is to add a stylesheet via a bookmarklet. For example to set the font to Arial, this works: javascript:document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend','<style>*{font-family: arial !important;}</style>') Using "mono" instead of "arial" also makes for an interesting Twitter experience.
- franhield 5y agoThe new Twitter font looks so weird, and at the same time, it looks quite strong on the eyes. They should revert it to the classic one and bring back the fleets.
- moolcool 5y ago> bring back the fleets Did anyone use fleets?
- dellcybpwr 5y agoWhen it was announced fleets were going away... had to look up because had no idea what a twitter fleet
- adamrezich 5y agois it actually objective qualities of the font that are giving people headaches, or is it just because it looks different from what the user expects, and twitter users are used to looking at twitter many times a day, so it throws their brain for a loop?
- RNCTX 5y agoOr that the standard response of a large subset of the loudest Twitter users is everything they don't like is "literal violence."
- marcinzm 5y agoI don't use twitter that much. I find the font uncomfortable to look at on my windows desktop but not my macbook. Especially the left hand navigation bar. so, for me, it's not about the change but about the font in specific rendering environments.
- mschuster91 5y agoWindows' font rendering just plain sucks compared to macOS, to a point I'm actually getting headaches. I know, subjective anecdata and all of that, but I haven't been able to pinpoint why exactly...
- nulbyte 5y agoI find handles and other bolded text are objectively difficult to read. Take a look at a bolded 'e' for a prime example; there is not enough whitespace, and the horizontal line is too thin, making it all but disappear in the middle of the bold curve.
- twic 5y agoThey should count themselves lucky. Just headaches and not seizures? https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/its-catching/202007/popular-website-is-reportedly-making-people-sick https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/its-catching/202007/...
- mbrubeck 5y ago
- NazakiAid 5y agoNoticed it yesterday and thought the stylesheet had glitched on my browser as the font was soo bad but then later on it was trending so realised Twitter had just been stupid. Was getting a headache from it. This change can be undone for now using this JS: document.cookie="ab_decider=responsive_web_chirp_font_enabled=false&responsive_web_nav_visual_refresh_enabled=false"
- nkingsy 5y agoThe text of this article is 50% a repeat of the embedded tweets. It’s like high schoolers gaming word counts have taken over publishing.
- zepto 5y agoSurely that’s exactly what happened.
- ceejayoz 5y ago"A few random Twitter users wrote some stuff" is one of my least favorite forms of modern journalism.
- adoxyz 5y agoYup. This is a non-story. People always complain when popular apps get UI updates.
- xwdv 5y agoMany of these articles could be generated automatically with a script using GPT-3. Simply supply a collection of tweets as a parameter.
- dtjb 5y agoI can't stand this "twitter hates x" trend where articles use a handful of embedded tweets to make their case, but then you look at the engagement on those tweets and they have like 2 likes. Good job, you found a couple of random people on twitter talking to themselves. You can do that for any opinion under the sun. Maybe people really do hate the font, but use some real numbers to make your case, not this anecdotal vox pop fluff.
- buu700 5y agoSame here. It's like all those sensationalist political / culture war articles that frame some out-there fringe idea as a mainstream agenda (e.g. "Curry considered racist"). Then you actually read past the headline, and it turns out some unknown blogger or tweeter was just looking for attention. Anyone going purely off of headlines, and taking them at face value, would have an absolutely bizarre worldview by now.
- dmitriid 5y agoEven their announcements on design and font updates never show screenshots and interactions from the actual site: it's all marketing shots and videos. I wouldn't be surprised if this change was never tested outside Figma/Sketch mockups.
- fsvavsd 5y agoNo screenshot of what new fonts look like, I don't have Twitter so cannot see it on twitter.com. It wants me to sign up.
- dellcybpwr 5y agoView any random account. Here's one: https://twitter.com/twitter https://twitter.com/twitter
- wruza 5y agoTwitter takes like full two minutes to load in recent years, is that normal?
- rconti 5y agoThere's something really strange that happened to me for over a year, and it's stopped. I can't remember what it was or why. I think using https://twitter.com https://twitter.com (without the www), forcing https, and using Safari. Some combo of those things made the site almost never load properly. Try adding in a WWW or a different browser if you're interested.
- mdorazio 5y agoI stared it for a good minute thinking maybe I wasn't being served the new font, but no, it's just so similar to Helvetica (Roman) that I have to deliberately look for the differences to tell. I compared Chirp and Helvetica side by side and the only significant differences in the characters themselves are in the upper case J, Q, and R, then lower case g and the numeral 2. Am I missing something or is it just that I go to twitter so seldom that I assumed it was always Helvetica? Edit: it seems it's not the font itself, but rather something going on with the rendering making it blurrier for some people than the previous typeface.
- MikusR 5y agoIt shows Segoe UI for me
- deleted 5y ago
- dellcybpwr 5y agoI really dislike the new font. Part of the problem is the spacing between characters.
- iKnowKungFoo 5y agoI like it on desktop, not so much on iOS. The spacing is more of an issue for me on mobile.
- nakodari 5y agoI agree, that's what bothering me too. It looks like an unfinished font.
- drewzero1 5y agoYes! The inconsistent character spacing and the width of the downstrokes seem to be at least parts of the problem.
- browningstreet 5y agoNot every thing on the Internet needs its own font. (I say as the former head of a type foundry.)
- dfxm12 5y agoWhy not try, though? First and foremost, I think it's a good thing that designers are getting work. I also think huge "for fun" webapps are in a particularly advantageous place when it comes to pushing the boundaries of design, mostly because they have people on hand who can do it and who probably want to do it. Next, it's really a low risk preposition. Maybe Office 365 needs to be conservative with fonts. Twitter can push boundaries, though. I wish they'd push boundaries more, ala Bertone or Memphis Group, but I guess the risks are larger the more you push the boundaries.
- turtlebits 5y agoTwitter's chirp webfont is almost 100k. On optimized sites, that can easily be larger then all of the HTML/CSS combined.
- TheRealPomax 5y agoBut tens to even hundreds of times smaller than any single tweet that has an image in it, so not really a useful metric.
- turtlebits 5y agoThat attitude is why web pages have gotten so bloated. https://twitter.com/Twitter https://twitter.com/Twitter is 1.6mb. (200k+ of fonts, 500k+ of JS)
- turtlebits 5y agoActually webbloatscore.com says 2,062 kB and 88 requests.
- 5y ago
- rconti 5y ago> All Western-language text now aligns left, making it easier to read as you scroll. Non-Western languages remain unchanged. I'm sorry, this is a change HOW?
- zinekeller 5y agoSimple flush to the left margin versus justified text, which was how Twitter aligns text.
- mihaic 5y agoTo anyone saying "Users will complain about anything", I'm on a Windows desktop and this is honestly the most unpleasant reading experience I've had on any big website in recent memory. There seems to be an issue with the OS antialiasing that is rendering characters slightly blurry to feel it's not focused, further straining my eyes. Seems to have only been tested on Bay Area Apple devices.
- shp0ngle 5y agoI have the newest most expensive (well, not the most expensive, but close) M1 MacBook and it's the same. It's weird how unpleasant it is. The new font seems rather nice, and I would not even notice it looks different, but... it really hurts to look at.
- zippergz 5y agoAgreed. You can't blame this on testing only on Macs, because it's bad on my Mac too.
- jaywalk 5y agoIt's bad on Mac, it's bad on Windows. What the hell did they use to develop and test this where it looked good?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- arrakeen 5y agolooks fine to me on linux, surprisingly. though i doubt that the designers tested on a linux box with a tweaked fontconfig edit: here's a comparison with helvetica https://i.imgur.com/BJlHQhf.gif https://i.imgur.com/BJlHQhf.gif
- chociej 5y agoCSS is seeing this stack on FF for me: "TwitterChirp", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif I'm getting Roboto on Linux which (a) looks great and (b) is very similar to the new font
- kps 5y agoThe ‘custom’ font has been identified¹ as Grilli Type GT America² with minor spacing change and a Twitter logo in the PUA. ¹ https://twitter.com/jeffjose/status/1425626162219286529 https://twitter.com/jeffjose/status/1425626162219286529 ² https://www.grillitype.com/typeface/gt-america https://www.grillitype.com/typeface/gt-america
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chociej 5y agoIt's very similar to Roboto. Noticeable differences side by side, but very similar.
- Freak_NL 5y agoIt looks like they've put a picture of an apple in the Private Use Area as well at U+F8FF. Weird; there's no need for the PUA there; just pick (heh) U+1F34E (red apple) or U+1F34F (green apple).
- GranPC 5y agoIt's for compatibility with the Apple logo that is displayed on iOS devices when that codepoint is rendered.
- bspammer 5y agoI enjoy the pettiness of not using apple’s actual logo.
- SllX 5y agoThat’s a holdover from MacRoman.[1] If you’re on a Macintosh, Option Shift K at least on the standard US layout. Still comes up in Apple docs and user forums. [1] http://www.alanwood.net/demos/macroman.html http://www.alanwood.net/demos/macroman.html
- warent 5y agoInterestingly that means Twitter text is no longer fully portable. If you copy some text from Twitter, you specifically need Chirp to render it properly or else characters like their special logo character will be broken for all other fonts Because they're using the "Private Use Area" of the font improperly... Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm feeling like this is an intentional decision in order to push other fonts/foundries to start adding the Twitter logo as a standard Unicode character. Basically bypassing the need for consensus by just forcing the matter and cementing their logo in typography standards.
- shp0ngle 5y agoI'm not the only one! I thought it's something with antialiasing or whatever on Mac, figured out I will solve it later with some setting or whatever. It literally physically hurts to read it.
- lucasmullens 5y agoMore tweet-based journalism. Isn't there a better article somewhere that actually shows the font?
- zippergz 5y agoAs you said, it is tweet-based. About a font on Twitter. The Tweets in the article show the font.
- city41 5y agoMust depend on your device as the tweets are using Proxima Nova for me. edit: although if I click into the tweets and view them on Twitter, it then uses Chirp.
- lucasmullens 5y agoI have no way of knowing if this was rolled out to 100% of users, or if they updated their embedded tweets to use the font. But more importantly I just want to see a side-by-side comparison.
- Minor49er 5y agoNot only that, but when they inevitably change the font again, it would be nice to be able to read a then-old article to see what the font looked like when it was announced.
- jrootabega 5y agoI wonder how many lapsed twitter users started using again after reading this, BECAUSE of this.
- egypturnash 5y agohttps://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1425545266757779463 https://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/142554526675777...
- causi 5y agoYou never know when something is going to crop up that causes you a headache. Personally, I can't use a phone with curved screen edges or a curved monitor without incurring a piercing headache after fifteen minutes or so.
- rikkipitt 5y agoI'm usually terrible at noticing typefaces (especially when developing to a design). But now this has been pointed out to me, I can't not see it. It's tricky to focus on and I can see why people are finding it troublesome...
- NelsonMinar 5y agoThe font rendering feels broken on my Windows machine to me. Like the designer only tested it on a Mac and didn't account for how Windows renders fonts differently.
- Filligree 5y agoDon’t worry, it looks equally bad on my Mac.
- albertopv 5y agoI'm one of those with headache, on my samsung s10e it seems blurred, I have to concentrate to read it well.
- adamrezich 5y agoadditionally, for those that missed it, [CHIRPBIRDICON] in this font is ligature'd into the Twitter logo
- rawling 5y ago... which, at least for me, then gets a nice red underline for being misspelt
- reidjs 5y agoI personally can’t stand reading Twitter, but I do like posting jokes and comments for my small group of friends. I built this to delegate posting to Twitter via GitHub actions from markdown files in the repo. https://github.com/reidjs/markdown-tweet-scheduler https://github.com/reidjs/markdown-tweet-scheduler
- lifesaverluke 5y agoWhy markdown? Does Twitter support rich text?
- aaomidi 5y agoThe new font is also destroying Arabic and Farsi text. Does Twitter not have a single Farsi or Arabic speaking employee? This is an indication that they really don't value diverse employees there. Can't believe no one was like "hey this is destroying readability of these two major languages."
- chociej 5y agoThe new font doesn't even have Arabic characters in my browser. It just gets rendered in Segoe UI. Which is fine, for what it's worth.
- jd115 5y agoI don't know about Twitter, but HN font (or colours, or spacing, I don't know) has always given me headaches. And I almost never have headaches otherwise.
- gowld 5y agog has an ugly tail, and ? kerning is too small. cnet's font is kind of ugly, too...
- crazygringo 5y agoA tweet showing the actual difference as screenshot: https://twitter.com/Tempo_Storm/status/1425549066377777156 https://twitter.com/Tempo_Storm/status/1425549066377777156 Appears to be a standard-res Windows rendering. (Obviously a Retina Mac/iOS rendering will be totally different.)
- dgan 5y agoPersonally i wouldn't be able to tell they re different without a hint Not sure what the fuss is about
- kevinh 5y agoSome fonts are only subtly different, but this doesn't strike me as one of them. Those lower case gs are about as different as the letter g can look.
- charwalker 5y agoThe lowercase g is so bad. The lower loop seems to sit a bit higher than other lowercase letters bottom out and the serifs are odd...
- __david__ 5y agoThat's standard for that style g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman#/media/File:Times_New_Roman-sample.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman#/media/File:Ti...
- lemoncucumber 5y agoPersonally I wouldn’t be able to crisply render the font on a low-DPI screen without a hint
- phreack 5y agoApparently some font renderers are bugging out on this new font making some letters render in a way that looks misaligned, which is very taxing on the eyes.
- epistasis 5y agoEvery UI change forces a cost on your users. It forces them to relearn the language of what your buttons mean (the Follow button semantics here are atrocious now, and give almost no affordances to users about what is going on). Changes to UI reduce familiarity, and if they are fond of your product, that is usually a really bad thing. Having a good friend change personality is disturbing and unpleasant! What is gained from these changes from Twitter, other than some employees are able to say they influenced the product? They may have tested with some users, but was the testing representative of reality? What risk was taken here for what amount of potential gain?
- blacktriangle 5y agoI feel like Basecamp is the only company that gets this right. Want to radically redo your UI? Ship a new version and let your existing users continue to use the old version.
- rurp 5y agoI wish this post was carved in stone in every consumer tech office. It is crazy to me how often companies produce negative value by redesigning their UI just for the sake of it. It's one thing if functionality has changed and you need to make a UI change to accomodate it, but reworking the UI for the exact same functionality is the equivalent of saying, "Our previous design was so bad we needed to burn a bunch of our and our customer's resources to recreate it. But trust us, this time we've got a good feeling about it".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chociej 5y agoIt's extremely similar to Roboto, which is how it was rendered for me before the change. So it seems almost like nothing happened.
- huhtenberg 5y agoThe difference is quite obvious, at least on Windows. Roboto is narrower, better hinted, has fewer embellishments, got a better consistency ("rhythm") and as a result it's much easier on the eyes. Here, side by side - https://i.imgur.com/tXokROR.png https://i.imgur.com/tXokROR.png - Roboto at the top, Chirp at the bottom.
- insin 5y agoIf you don't like the new font or Follow/Following buttons, my browser extension/user script for Twitter can now get rid of them, screenshots in the release notes here (the latest Chrome version is still pending review at the time of typing): https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/releases https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/releases I tried turning Chirp back on after a full day of coding at work and it's even worse when your eyes are starting to get tired, genuinely unpleasant to look at (on Windows, at least).
- chociej 5y agoYeah the follow buttons confused me for quite a while. I thought I was following a bunch of folks at first glance. Then I realized they've flipped the sense of outlined/solid buttons!
- jchw 5y ago> Regardless of whether you’re pro or anti Helvetica, I think we can all agree that it’s not up for the job. … we can? (From https://twitter.com/DerritDeRouen/status/1354548649561186306 https://twitter.com/DerritDeRouen/status/1354548649561186306)
- zamalek 5y agoYeah, that tweet was a definite WTF moment for me. Having to explain what cargo culting is to tech folks, is becoming more rare for me. Yet we continue to try to summon those gods.
- snazz 5y agoHelvetica definitely was not designed with screens in mind—Apple replaced it with San Francisco for both a legibility and a brand cohesiveness purpose. That said, this feels like a weird argument given that Twitter didn’t use Helvetica on any modern platform when it used system fonts. SF Pro, Segoe UI, and Roboto are all designed for screens unlike Helvetica.
- jchw 5y agoPersonally, I find Helvetica to be extremely sufficient for reading text on screen. Maybe it isn’t the best possible font, but I think their statement is kind of non-sensical, it makes it sound like it would’ve been a problem to use Helvetica… I doubt it.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoI don't get it. This news is cristal clear to me, at least on my one plus 8 pro. I don't see any blur. I don't get fatigue. I find it quite neutral, but easy to read. Weird.
- bruce343434 5y agoWould have liked some picture examples... This is like somebody typing out what a color looks like.
- mmh0000 5y agoFor those who just want to see the font [0,1,2,3] without all the fuss: [0] https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-bold-web.woff https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-bold-web.woff [1] https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-heavy-web.woff https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-heavy-web.woff [2] https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-medium-web.woff https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-medium-web.woff [3] https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-regular-web.woff https://abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-regular-web.woff
- Fiahil 5y agoI was about to dismiss these as complete fabrication and go on with my life. However, after looking at the font screenshot, I instantly felt a small pinch behind my eyes and at the back of my head. Coincidence ? Maybe, but it happened also with my SO and some members of the family (without warning them first). So there might be a problem with this font indeed! Note: we saw the screenshot on my iphone 12.
- spicybright 5y agoSame. I genuinely have no idea how something as big as twitter could botch this so bad. Is buying one of every majorly used device and handing them to a bunch of testers really not worth the effort?
- thrower123 5y agoIt feels like I'm developing heatstroke, or looking at a particularly unsettling black-and-white prison uniform.
- asadkn 5y agoOn MacBook (built-in retina display), it has very similar antialiasing to the default UI font SF. However, the x-height is smaller and that bothers me a bit. If I increase the font-size in tweets to 15.5px, it matches old size and looks good again.
- jrm4 5y agoEmblematic of my general disdain for the entire field of Web Design/UX/UI, whatever we're calling it these days. Just let the damn user decide for themselves. It's ridiculous and stupid that we can't do this.
- zajio1am 5y agoSimple solution, just disable use of custom fonts in browser preferences, to force use of configured system fonts.
- TheRealPomax 5y agoNote: simple does not imply useful. Plenty of great content out there that strongly benefits from telling the browser not to use the extremely limited "web safe" fonts, or incredibly ugly OS defaults for non-latin content. Let along fonts for typesetting maths, or diagrams, or even smart things like "temporarily showing scribbles instead of real text, until everyone's clicked the "ready to share!" button on their shared page experience". This is the nuclear option: it's simple, and also ensures a terrible experience of a web with content based on the fact that webfonts are going to work.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mleonhard 5y agoTwitter's designers did this because it helps them get promoted and earn more money.
- pedroma 5y agoNew font looks fine to me. But might be because I don't read Twitter every day. Didn't even know if the new font was active until I checked the Chrome inspector.
- NelsonMinar 5y agoApparently there are problems with the font hinting which is why it looks bad on Windows. Folks are still figuring it out, but see e.g. https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1425892769550245888 https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1425892769550245888
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoWow I thought something felt weird when I looked at the screen then looked away. I'm not dyslexic or anything but looking at Twitter with that font almost makes my head hurt, not kidding.
- iainmerrick 5y agoThis looks very much as if the font renderer is aggressively hinting to the pixel grid vertically, but not horizontally. That’s a known trick for getting a decent compromise between crisp text (along the baselines and tops of letters) with subpixel horizontal kerning. I doubt the Android renderer is really broken and no-one has noticed until now, so I’d guess the font either has bad hinting, or more likely it’s just being displayed at an awkward size and vertical positions are being rounded in an awkward way. You can see the slight deviations from the baseline in the iOS screenshots, it’s just much more subtle as it isn’t being hinted. (Source: I contributed a little bit to font rendering in Urho3D, to fix some similar text aliasing glitches: https://github.com/urho3d/Urho3D/issues/1953 https://github.com/urho3d/Urho3D/issues/1953)
- handrous 5y ago> I doubt the Android renderer is really broken and no-one has noticed until now, so I’d guess the font either has bad hinting, or more likely it’s just being displayed at an awkward size and vertical positions are being rounded in an awkward way. You can see the slight deviations from the baseline in the iOS screenshots, it’s just much more subtle as it isn’t being hinted. Having developed for Android off and on over the years, I would absolutely not rule out the possibility that there's been a really basic problem with font rendering, reported in 2008 and repeatedly closed as stale on each version release then re-opened, with the most recent "any progress?" post dated 3 weeks ago, that everyone's just been quietly working around.
- aj3 5y agoExplanation and comparison between platforms: https://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1425902422627598344 https://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/142590242262759...
- iainmerrick 5y agoThanks, that’s a great investigation! So broken hinting it is. Embarrassing that they didn’t pick it up in testing.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y agoI was really pleased when Stack Overflow switched to system fonts [0] and hoped this would be a trend. With system fonts there is less cognitive load going from app to app. The font stays out of your way and serves its purpose best: presenting textual information. Here we have the opposite: Twitter decided that tweet bodies should perform a marketing function. They sacrificed utility for brand cohesiveness. I understand the motivation, but there's a middle ground that serves both purposes: use your own custom font for the UI and use a system font for user-generated content. Gmail does this: the UI is Roboto, while the default font is "Arial, Helvetica". I'm sure I'll get used to it, but eh. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27063991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27063991
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- geerlingguy 5y agoThe 'brand' needs to differentiate, though. And if Facebook's empire does it, so must Twitter. It seems like when you're VC-backed and get to a certain size, one of the items on the checklist is "design custom font that looks like every other VC-backed platform's custom font, but is slightly different." Didn't Dropbox also make their own font?
- dunnevens 5y agoYou are correct. They did make their own font. Which seemed like a very strange expense to me. Even though I use Dropbox heavily, I'll almost never see their font. Dropbox is used mostly through the OS's file manager.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoMiddle management becomes a bit of a circle jerk in large companies. They have to find reasons to justify their existence so you get branding initiatives like this to pump up the annual reviews.
- thristian 5y agoFirefox's "Don't allow websites to use custom fonts" option makes the Web feel much more cohesive and polished.
- ori_b 5y agoDisabling web fonts works. It speeds up page load, and let's you pick fonts that you find readable. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web-fonts/olmabeadgbpmhllgdkemfdnmkngkbkeg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web-fonts/...
- ErikAugust 5y agohttps://trimread.org/articles/210 https://trimread.org/articles/210
- helipad 5y agoSince most of the comments are negative, I will say I noticed the new font yesterday and loved it on my Windows computer in Chrome. I switch between Mac for work and Windows for pleasure and Windows font rendering can be hit and miss. I notice fonts on websites a lot and get frustrated when they're bad but this was one of the most pleasant ones I've experienced, to the point I went and looked it up. I didn't realize it was a modified Grilli Type, I've always enjoyed their fonts so not much surprise I liked it.
- afrcnc 5y ago"apparently"
- emodendroket 5y agoIn three months this will all be forgotten.
- omoikane 5y agoThis change appears to only affect posts in western languages, and users with multilingual content end up with a mix of fonts in their timeline, which doesn't look all that great. But at least Twitter did not mix fonts within the same post, I guess.
- jnovek 5y agoI’m a visually impaired individual with moderate disability — I can use tools like custom typefaces and zooming to manage most of my needs but I rarely use screen readers as well. Personally, the main difficulty I have with the typeface is the kerning — the minimum space between two letters. I don’t know how these things are measured, if it really is as tight as it looks, but subjectively it feels like surprisingly little space. It’s much harder for me to read than Neue Helvetica.
- Sunspark 5y agoI routinely override web fonts in Firefox by deselecting "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above". This would solve the desktop web interface. I use Verdana a lot for this purpose. Chromium browsers don't seem to have this override font option. Now you have found a new reason to love Firefox, you're welcome! For mobile devices, you will have to use a third party app. Sometimes, the corporately-chosen font is just empirically bad.
- mattacular 5y agoHeadaches? That's just a side effect of being on twitter I'm afraid.
- FullyFunctional 5y agoThat's insane. I had crazy headaches yesterday (very unusual for me) and this could very well be the reason. I guess this is a good motivation to cut down on Twitter (now I just need HN to switch to this font as well).
- mumblemumble 5y agoMy guess is the headaches either only happen if you use Twitter while drinking the new Coke Zero, or they only happen if you use Twitter while not drinking the new Coke Zero.
- filchermcurr 5y agoHuh. I looked at a side by side comparison and I could barely tell the difference. And everything on twitter.com seems legible. I guess I'm not typeface sophisticated enough! Now the PayPal and Dropbox fonts... those I noticed. And those I loathe entirely.
- Liskni_si 5y agoI solved this by adding this rule to uBlock: ||http://abs.twimg.com/fonts/*.woff
- thamer 5y agoYour filter didn't work for me with uBlock Origin, also I'm not sure that many people still use Twitter over unencrypted HTTP. This filter seems to work (tested with uBlock Origin 1.37.2): ||abs.twimg.com/fonts/chirp-*.woff$font
- Liskni_si 5y agoOh, right, mea culpa. I just copy&pasted this from a tweet and didn't notice the added ://.
- Markoff 5y agojust tried in My filters, left column looks still same (much thinner font than before), what am I doing wrong? W10 Pro (customs caling size 110) + Edge (Chromium)
- Liskni_si 5y agoIt's not meant to undo all design changes on Twitter. It just disables the webfont and lets your browser use its default font instead.
- _carbyau_ 5y agoAt one stage there was a thing for applications to have skins or themes and you could make your own. Why isn't this a thing anymore?
- etempleton 5y agoI don't know about headaches, but I do find this font decidedly less readable. The letters are too spaced. It does something to my brain that makes me have to slow down while reading.
- a-dub 5y agois this like the digital tobacco equivalent of getting a sore throat and a cough from not being able to get your usual brand?
- jayesh-bhoot 5y agoTangentially related: If you use Firefox’s feature that allows one to turn off website fonts, I wrote an addon which builds on this feature. Firefox’s stock feature is all-or-nothing. The add-on remembers the websites for which the user wants to enforce/unenforce browser fonts. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enforce-browser-fonts/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enforce-brows...
- hellbannedguy 5y agoI don't know about Twitter's new font. I can offer this; 99.99% of the time I hate font changes, especially from companies that I am used to looking at. I'm not one of those hate any changes guys. I will admit if it works, don't touch it though. A lot of websites don't just work. HN just works. No need to change anything. It font change that irritates me. Viacom/Comcast recently changed their font on their lousy viewing guide, and it's irritating. Why? I think it a combination of, "you shouid get working on your lousy app, and not the font?" Changing font is easy. Changing an api is better especially when it's needed, along with lowering price from customers who hate your company?
- dkbrk 5y agoMaybe I'm being a curmudgeon, but I miss bitmapped fonts. I use terminus wherever I can. It's exactly 12 pixels high (there are larger sizes, but they're not really useful). It's crisp, and clear, and easy to read, and looks excellent in Emacs. There's no fancy font hinting or subpixel rendering. The font specifies exactly the pixels that it occupies, and that's it. If Emacs tries to render it at 11 or 13 pixels high, it doesn't -- it renders at exactly 12. Some years back, firefox removed support for bitmapped fonts. So I had to set it to use terminus-ttf instead. This works fine in many places; the comments here in hacker news are being rendered at 12px so it looks pretty similar to the bitmapped font except with the addition of some subpixel rendering. It makes the edges of the letters soft and fuzzy but I would really prefer nice crisp, clean pixels. It's not too bad, though. But in this comment box, firefox wants to render the text at 13.33px high, so it tries to upscale it a little bit and it looks muddy and terrible. I guess things are different on a high-DPI display, but if you want to optimize the legibility of characters while minimizing their size, you really can't beat a bitmapped font where someone actually went and manually placed each and every pixel by hand.
- hiptobecubic 5y agoThe way marketing teams talk about asinine changes like this as if they are making deep, meaningful improvements to everyone's lives is just nauseating. It's a fucking font and no one was asking for it. There are a million ways twitter UX could improve and this is almost the stupidest one I can think of.
- janc_ 5y agoIf they would just spend time to fix the copy/paste bug instead, for example…
- pabs3 5y agoThis is one of the reasons I always disable web fonts, in preference to the system fonts, so my browser interface is consistent with my desktop interface.
- kalyantm 5y agoAre you sure it's not just Twitter giving them the headache?