5 ms·

In my opinion in most cases it's neither worth the price nor worth the effort to use paid fonts on a website. There's a huge amount of fonts for free on Google

by ckdot2 4y ago

In my opinion in most cases it's neither worth the price nor worth the effort to use paid fonts on a website. There's a huge amount of fonts for free on Google Fonts. Also, yoou are allowed to host them on your own server, so there's no privacy issue.

huhtenberg 4y ago
Fun fact - versions that you can download from GF for self-hosting aren't necessarily what GF actually serves out. Got burned by this with Noto Sans when the self-hosted version had different x-height at a certain text size and looked notably worse than the one of GF service. Caveat emptor.
EmilyHughes 4y ago
In Austria there was recently a case of a women sueing thousands of businesses for using google fonts on their website. The reasoning was that the fonts are hosted on google, so by visiting these sites they sent her IP to google without her knowing (what is meant is just the font download via the browser from google servers, nothing was actually "sent"). Apparently she visited these thousands of business websites one by one and the infringement on her privacy caused her so much emotional damage that she wanted to be compensated for it. The women herself remained anonymous but last I heard the lawyer that worked with her on this got his tires slashed and threatend with violence.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  We had the same shit in Germany. The lawyer and the crying-wolf frontman are facing a criminal investigation and police seized 346.000€ in December last year [1]. > what is meant is just the font download via the browser from google servers, nothing was actually "sent" Well, Google does get sent the IP address, and that is enough to be covered by GDPR regulation. While I do think it's important the GDPR gets respected, I seriously think that enforcement needs a "severity" threshold for fines - and there needs to be some distinction between actually legitimate "necessary for functioning" data processing which would include stuff such as Google Fonts and between abuse of "necessary for functioning" data processing that includes all kinds of trackers. [1] https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/hannover_weser-leinegebiet/Google-Fonts-Razzien-wegen-illegaler-Abmahnungen,mahnschreiben100.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/hannover_weser-...
  - Hizonner 4y ago
    > there needs to be some distinction between actually legitimate "necessary for functioning" data processing which would include stuff such as Google Fonts Downloaded fonts are not "necessary for functioning". Just use the system fonts. Essentially no actual user cares AT ALL about the fonts on your Web site. If you're wasting time and energy on stuff like fonts, all you're doing is frustrating users by not putting that time and energy into anything actually valuable... while wasting every user's bandwidth. Anyway, you have no control over what Google does with that IP address (or any associated cookies), and likely no reliable assurance that what Google does with the information is "necessary for functioning". I would expect Google to tie that download to every other download from that user's browser on every other site, and use the results for every possible purpose. If by some miracle Google doesn't do that, lots of the other third-party crap that sites embed will. Often the third party providers' descriptions of how their stuff work will be missing, incomplete, unintentionally wrong, intentionally misleading, or outright lies, so to have any real assurance you'd need to do some serious due diligence on every third party embed. Which nobody does, and which would defeat the "easy use" advantage of using those embeds to begin with. Nearly all Web pages could load without a single connection to any server other than the one in the page URL. It's completely appropriate to treat every such connection as a disclosure of information to a third party... with all the regulatory requirements that should come with that... regardless of whether or not you've gotten used to making those connections without thinking about them. If it takes big fines to enforce that, well, I guess that's tough.
    - EmilyHughes 4y ago
      But it's the job of the government to enforce that via warnings and fines, not private entities sueing for "emotional damage". The IP alone is almost useless anyway unless it can be tied to other information you've given up to google already - in which case you can't tell you are that cautious with your browsing to begin with.
    - hakfoo 4y ago
      Couldn't at least "icon fonts" like FontAwesome be necessary for meaningful functionality of some sites? A site that's sprinkled with [FE30] placeholders where the designers expected icons isn't necessarily readable or usable.
- kjs3 4y ago
  You can sue thousands of people in Austria and remain anonymous? No way is that ripe for abuse.../s
marcus_holmes 4y ago
Not only the privacy issue, but the point where Google decides to charge for fonts, or drop it completely, and your website suddenly gets ugly. I always download the font and serve it myself. Arguing with designers about fonts isn't fun. I totally understand how they want the pretty thing to fit in with their artistic vision, but the pain and cost of paid fonts is such a huge drag that I refuse to do it (especially if they want to install a tracker - that's an absolute no). It has got heated in the past.
- kjs3 4y ago
  It has got heated in the past. I have found "find a new web designer" to be one of the less difficult tasks to land in my backlog.
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    There's a tradeoff here I think. Designers should be passionate about their design, and push for the details that matter to them. But there's a line - too passionate and it becomes unworkable. But too far the other way, where they're not fighting for their design and too willing to compromise it, and you end up with lacklustre designs.
    - kjs3 4y ago
      Oh, I certainly agree and sorry if that came off as "don't have passion". You should. I'm thinking of my experiences where the assessment was "this looks amazing but here's the technical reasons why this is a bad idea" was met with the moral equivalent of "how DARE you compromise my artistic vision for your filthy technology issues!", and that's usually a good time to part ways with that designer.

by ckdot2 4y ago

huhtenberg 4y ago

Fun fact - versions that you can download from GF for self-hosting aren't necessarily what GF actually serves out. Got burned by this with Noto Sans when the self-hosted version had different x-height at a certain text size and looked notably worse than the one of GF service. Caveat emptor.

EmilyHughes 4y ago

In Austria there was recently a case of a women sueing thousands of businesses for using google fonts on their website. The reasoning was that the fonts are hosted on google, so by visiting these sites they sent her IP to google without her knowing (what is meant is just the font download via the browser from google servers, nothing was actually "sent"). Apparently she visited these thousands of business websites one by one and the infringement on her privacy caused her so much emotional damage that she wanted to be compensated for it. The women herself remained anonymous but last I heard the lawyer that worked with her on this got his tires slashed and threatend with violence.

mschuster91 4y ago
We had the same shit in Germany. The lawyer and the crying-wolf frontman are facing a criminal investigation and police seized 346.000€ in December last year [1]. > what is meant is just the font download via the browser from google servers, nothing was actually "sent" Well, Google does get sent the IP address, and that is enough to be covered by GDPR regulation. While I do think it's important the GDPR gets respected, I seriously think that enforcement needs a "severity" threshold for fines - and there needs to be some distinction between actually legitimate "necessary for functioning" data processing which would include stuff such as Google Fonts and between abuse of "necessary for functioning" data processing that includes all kinds of trackers. [1] https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/hannover_weser-leinegebiet/Google-Fonts-Razzien-wegen-illegaler-Abmahnungen,mahnschreiben100.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/hannover_weser-...
- Hizonner 4y ago
  > there needs to be some distinction between actually legitimate "necessary for functioning" data processing which would include stuff such as Google Fonts Downloaded fonts are not "necessary for functioning". Just use the system fonts. Essentially no actual user cares AT ALL about the fonts on your Web site. If you're wasting time and energy on stuff like fonts, all you're doing is frustrating users by not putting that time and energy into anything actually valuable... while wasting every user's bandwidth. Anyway, you have no control over what Google does with that IP address (or any associated cookies), and likely no reliable assurance that what Google does with the information is "necessary for functioning". I would expect Google to tie that download to every other download from that user's browser on every other site, and use the results for every possible purpose. If by some miracle Google doesn't do that, lots of the other third-party crap that sites embed will. Often the third party providers' descriptions of how their stuff work will be missing, incomplete, unintentionally wrong, intentionally misleading, or outright lies, so to have any real assurance you'd need to do some serious due diligence on every third party embed. Which nobody does, and which would defeat the "easy use" advantage of using those embeds to begin with. Nearly all Web pages could load without a single connection to any server other than the one in the page URL. It's completely appropriate to treat every such connection as a disclosure of information to a third party... with all the regulatory requirements that should come with that... regardless of whether or not you've gotten used to making those connections without thinking about them. If it takes big fines to enforce that, well, I guess that's tough.
  - EmilyHughes 4y ago
    But it's the job of the government to enforce that via warnings and fines, not private entities sueing for "emotional damage". The IP alone is almost useless anyway unless it can be tied to other information you've given up to google already - in which case you can't tell you are that cautious with your browsing to begin with.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    Couldn't at least "icon fonts" like FontAwesome be necessary for meaningful functionality of some sites? A site that's sprinkled with [FE30] placeholders where the designers expected icons isn't necessarily readable or usable.
kjs3 4y ago
You can sue thousands of people in Austria and remain anonymous? No way is that ripe for abuse.../s

marcus_holmes 4y ago

Not only the privacy issue, but the point where Google decides to charge for fonts, or drop it completely, and your website suddenly gets ugly. I always download the font and serve it myself. Arguing with designers about fonts isn't fun. I totally understand how they want the pretty thing to fit in with their artistic vision, but the pain and cost of paid fonts is such a huge drag that I refuse to do it (especially if they want to install a tracker - that's an absolute no). It has got heated in the past.

kjs3 4y ago
It has got heated in the past. I have found "find a new web designer" to be one of the less difficult tasks to land in my backlog.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  There's a tradeoff here I think. Designers should be passionate about their design, and push for the details that matter to them. But there's a line - too passionate and it becomes unworkable. But too far the other way, where they're not fighting for their design and too willing to compromise it, and you end up with lacklustre designs.
  - kjs3 4y ago
    Oh, I certainly agree and sorry if that came off as "don't have passion". You should. I'm thinking of my experiences where the assessment was "this looks amazing but here's the technical reasons why this is a bad idea" was met with the moral equivalent of "how DARE you compromise my artistic vision for your filthy technology issues!", and that's usually a good time to part ways with that designer.