3 ms·

> Loading fewer fonts, and serving them yourself. How about no serving of fonts? I don't think I've ever looked at a webpage and thought it would be improved

> Loading fewer fonts, and serving them yourself. How about no serving of fonts? I don't think I've ever looked at a webpage and thought it would be improved by a particular font family. What exactly can't be accomplished with standard web fonts? Icons? Haha, don't even go there.

nicbou 5y ago
In my case it guarantees a certain level of readability that is consistent across platforms. I spent quite a bit of time fine tuning the font weights to help readability. That costs about 60 kb, so it's hardly a huge sacrifice.
lazyjeff 5y ago
Absolutely, especially with the recent "invention" of the native font stack as a solution that does not require loading external files while showing a nice modern font. Imagine if the trade-off was more explicit to the visitors: would you want something that made your web browsing slower, your text flashes in like a cheap powerpoint slide, and sent your data to Google, in exchange for being able to read in a different font? External web fonts are purely for the ego of the web developer, not for the reader.
shakna 5y ago
I actually disabled loading of webfonts. The only two websites I've encountered where I actually notice it, and remember that I did that, is Google Translate and a particular government website I use about once a year. Everything, everywhere else, seems to work just fine with using the browser defaults.
- ratww 5y ago
  > The only two websites I've encountered where I actually notice it, and remember that I did that, is Google Translate and a particular government website I use about once a year. That's probably because of the Google Material Icons font, I believe? It shows or used to show text instead of icons when it couldn't load.
  - shakna 5y ago
    > That's probably because of the Google Material Icons font, I believe? It shows or used to show text instead of icons when it couldn't load. All icon fonts _should_ do this. It's just that the Google Translate site is designed in such a way that the fallback text doesn't render correctly, overflowing and overlapping over everything else, which makes it noticeable. It seems to very much be a 'pixel perfect' design, rather than responsive. Everywhere else, the fallback fits naturally, or renders to a standardised UTF-8 symbol, so that it isn't noticeable to me for day-to-day usage.
Klonoar 5y ago
Another option is that you keep 90% of your text in the default font (e.g, -apple-system or the equivalent stack elsewhere), and then load only the specific weights for whatever title(s) or so on you need. Hell, I've outright just crammed a few characters into a base64 encoded font in inline CSS, which - while I'm sure makes many here grimace - loads faster than anything else I've tested. (I'm a big fan of just shipping everything down the pipe as one file, short of images - I do this on my personal site and it makes me happy that it "just works": https://rymc.io/ https://rymc.io/ )
gjvnq 5y ago
For me it is because fonts are part of the artistic expression of my website. Also, it helps with formatting code just the way I want it.

nicbou 5y ago

In my case it guarantees a certain level of readability that is consistent across platforms. I spent quite a bit of time fine tuning the font weights to help readability. That costs about 60 kb, so it's hardly a huge sacrifice.

lazyjeff 5y ago

Absolutely, especially with the recent "invention" of the native font stack as a solution that does not require loading external files while showing a nice modern font. Imagine if the trade-off was more explicit to the visitors: would you want something that made your web browsing slower, your text flashes in like a cheap powerpoint slide, and sent your data to Google, in exchange for being able to read in a different font? External web fonts are purely for the ego of the web developer, not for the reader.

shakna 5y ago

I actually disabled loading of webfonts. The only two websites I've encountered where I actually notice it, and remember that I did that, is Google Translate and a particular government website I use about once a year. Everything, everywhere else, seems to work just fine with using the browser defaults.

ratww 5y ago
> The only two websites I've encountered where I actually notice it, and remember that I did that, is Google Translate and a particular government website I use about once a year. That's probably because of the Google Material Icons font, I believe? It shows or used to show text instead of icons when it couldn't load.
- shakna 5y ago
  > That's probably because of the Google Material Icons font, I believe? It shows or used to show text instead of icons when it couldn't load. All icon fonts _should_ do this. It's just that the Google Translate site is designed in such a way that the fallback text doesn't render correctly, overflowing and overlapping over everything else, which makes it noticeable. It seems to very much be a 'pixel perfect' design, rather than responsive. Everywhere else, the fallback fits naturally, or renders to a standardised UTF-8 symbol, so that it isn't noticeable to me for day-to-day usage.

Klonoar 5y ago

Another option is that you keep 90% of your text in the default font (e.g, -apple-system or the equivalent stack elsewhere), and then load only the specific weights for whatever title(s) or so on you need. Hell, I've outright just crammed a few characters into a base64 encoded font in inline CSS, which - while I'm sure makes many here grimace - loads faster than anything else I've tested. (I'm a big fan of just shipping everything down the pipe as one file, short of images - I do this on my personal site and it makes me happy that it "just works": https://rymc.io/ https://rymc.io/ )

gjvnq 5y ago

For me it is because fonts are part of the artistic expression of my website. Also, it helps with formatting code just the way I want it.