4 ms·

Alternatively, just stop messing with the font. It's not necessary, annoys users and takes a lot of work to get right.

lelandfe 4y ago
I know HN can be pretty utilitarian at times, but custom fonts are nice. The New Yorker simply would not be The New Yorker without their font stack. It's not that hard to get right (seriously, it should take maybe an hour?) and won't need to be touched ever again once you have it in good shape :)
- azemetre 4y ago
  If you don't use custom fonts and strictly system fonts, you get a lot of performance benefits; which may seem minor, but multiple this by tens of millions of people and you're talking about a real world climate impact here. If the choice is between style vs performance, we should always default toward performance. Besides many OS's have added more system fonts throughout the last two decades. If anything we need to encourage OS's to have more interfont operability (if that's a word), I don't know the legal ramifications (there's gotta be one) but there's no reason why the most popular google fonts couldn't be included in various OS's. Obviously I'm not an OS dev, so I'm curious if the limitations are purely legal or implementation.
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    Browsers are actually going the opposite way now, and are locking down access to system fonts beyond a standardized list: https://wicg.github.io/local-font-access/ https://wicg.github.io/local-font-access/ This is to prevent fingerprinting of users (adding new browser-accessible fonts would sadly mean more accurate fingerprinting)
    - azemetre 4y ago
      Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the info but this is beyond disappointing.
    - xigoi 4y ago
      I'm wondering, would it be possible to add a mechanism that would allow JavaScript to get information like the list of fonts, but make it impossible to send it anywhere? Have the list wrapped in some special type that infests everything it touches and things that perform requests will refuse to send it.
      - chrismorgan 4y ago
        This is fundamentally impossible to implement in anything anywhere near as powerful as JavaScript, because of side-channel attacks <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack>. (In practice, you wouldn’t even get that far, because universal taint checking would certainly be deemed unacceptably expensive. You can get away with such stuff for individual types, like in Trusted Types kinda, but imposing it on the entire language is not going to fly.)
spread_love 4y ago
Big hit to site identity though. Agreed it introduces issues, but it's not realistic to think you'll convince Marketing to drop all custom typefaces. Used responsibly, they can improve a site's appearance without hindering UX.
bilater 4y ago
That's like saying everyone should dress in plain clothes and not waste money on fancy shit. I mean sure...but also not really a viable solution.
- social_quotient 4y ago
  I know you’re kidding but imagine the optimization on clothing production and cognitive load on a daily basis.

I know HN can be pretty utilitarian at times, but custom fonts are nice. The New Yorker simply would not be The New Yorker without their font stack. It's not that hard to get right (seriously, it should take maybe an hour?) and won't need to be touched ever again once you have it in good shape :)

azemetre 4y ago
If you don't use custom fonts and strictly system fonts, you get a lot of performance benefits; which may seem minor, but multiple this by tens of millions of people and you're talking about a real world climate impact here. If the choice is between style vs performance, we should always default toward performance. Besides many OS's have added more system fonts throughout the last two decades. If anything we need to encourage OS's to have more interfont operability (if that's a word), I don't know the legal ramifications (there's gotta be one) but there's no reason why the most popular google fonts couldn't be included in various OS's. Obviously I'm not an OS dev, so I'm curious if the limitations are purely legal or implementation.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  Browsers are actually going the opposite way now, and are locking down access to system fonts beyond a standardized list: https://wicg.github.io/local-font-access/ https://wicg.github.io/local-font-access/ This is to prevent fingerprinting of users (adding new browser-accessible fonts would sadly mean more accurate fingerprinting)
  - azemetre 4y ago
    Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for the info but this is beyond disappointing.
  - xigoi 4y ago
    I'm wondering, would it be possible to add a mechanism that would allow JavaScript to get information like the list of fonts, but make it impossible to send it anywhere? Have the list wrapped in some special type that infests everything it touches and things that perform requests will refuse to send it.
    - chrismorgan 4y ago
      This is fundamentally impossible to implement in anything anywhere near as powerful as JavaScript, because of side-channel attacks <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack>. (In practice, you wouldn’t even get that far, because universal taint checking would certainly be deemed unacceptably expensive. You can get away with such stuff for individual types, like in Trusted Types kinda, but imposing it on the entire language is not going to fly.)

spread_love 4y ago

Big hit to site identity though. Agreed it introduces issues, but it's not realistic to think you'll convince Marketing to drop all custom typefaces. Used responsibly, they can improve a site's appearance without hindering UX.

bilater 4y ago

That's like saying everyone should dress in plain clothes and not waste money on fancy shit. I mean sure...but also not really a viable solution.

social_quotient 4y ago
I know you’re kidding but imagine the optimization on clothing production and cognitive load on a daily basis.