4 ms·

I did not finish that article precisely because of their fonts. When I first opened the page, the text was displayed in a "Times" font, which looked very crisp

by maho 13y ago

I did not finish that article precisely because of their fonts. When I first opened the page, the text was displayed in a "Times" font, which looked very crisp but surprisingly bland, considering the topic of the text. I have NoScript running and I realized it was probably blocking the script that downloads a custom font. (In this case, "Karla" from googleapis.) Digging deeper, their css rules don't specify a fallback font (the css file does, but it is overwritten by an inline style), so Firefox defaulted to the 'Times' font. Ok, I thought, let me see that font-magic they are talking about in action, and I enabled scripts on adpushup.com. The result was... suboptimal. The letter spacing was huge and the fonts were extremely blurry. I probably can't blame them for the fact the font displayed blurry. (A Firefox problem? Maybe Windows? I don't know what is going on in the background.) But I can, and I do, blame them for not being aware of the blurriness problem (Windows XP + Firefox can't be such a rare combination) and for not specifying a proper fallback font. Well, those two things bugged me enough to stop reading.

ankitoberoi 13y ago
Hi, Thanks for pointing this out. XP+FF is indeed important, it is about 4% of our traffic. The CSS fallback is being fixed. The font looks same on 7 & XP both: http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/21265f29764195b7a2985887cf62e7daebdf6f27 http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/21265f29764195b7a298... http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/a81e07f3288687d3fc0f5344c554a9ff3686c911 http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/a81e07f3288687d3fc0f... Would you be kind enough to upload a screenshot of the blurry font? :)
- maho 13y ago
  Sure! Here is what I see (with scripts enabled): http://postimg.org/image/572wjz4rp/ http://postimg.org/image/572wjz4rp/ It's similar to what browserstack shows (the wavy look of the top bar of the capital T in the headline, the "hat" on the capital O in the text), but in some ways it looks worse on my system, especially the bold face: http://postimg.org/image/r4zddrjs5/ http://postimg.org/image/r4zddrjs5/ Note the jaggy lower part of the bold, lower case y, and how the bottom of the bold lower case e and the top of the bold lower case t are thinning out precariously.. Times, on the other hand, does not look blurry: http://postimg.org/image/4cl9wjwql/ http://postimg.org/image/4cl9wjwql/ Maybe my eyes need recalibration, but personally I find times much easier to read, mostly due to its crispness.
jtth 13y ago
It looks hideous on OS X 10.9 in Safari. But the ideas are good and sound.
- ominous_prime 13y ago
  And chrome on 10.9 is just as bad. It's painful to read.
  - falcolas 13y ago
    And Firefox on 10.9 as well. The font didn't seem to anti-alias well, making it painful to read.

by maho 13y ago

ankitoberoi 13y ago

Hi, Thanks for pointing this out. XP+FF is indeed important, it is about 4% of our traffic. The CSS fallback is being fixed. The font looks same on 7 & XP both: http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/21265f29764195b7a2985887cf62e7daebdf6f27 http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/21265f29764195b7a298... http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/a81e07f3288687d3fc0f5344c554a9ff3686c911 http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/a81e07f3288687d3fc0f... Would you be kind enough to upload a screenshot of the blurry font? :)

maho 13y ago
Sure! Here is what I see (with scripts enabled): http://postimg.org/image/572wjz4rp/ http://postimg.org/image/572wjz4rp/ It's similar to what browserstack shows (the wavy look of the top bar of the capital T in the headline, the "hat" on the capital O in the text), but in some ways it looks worse on my system, especially the bold face: http://postimg.org/image/r4zddrjs5/ http://postimg.org/image/r4zddrjs5/ Note the jaggy lower part of the bold, lower case y, and how the bottom of the bold lower case e and the top of the bold lower case t are thinning out precariously.. Times, on the other hand, does not look blurry: http://postimg.org/image/4cl9wjwql/ http://postimg.org/image/4cl9wjwql/ Maybe my eyes need recalibration, but personally I find times much easier to read, mostly due to its crispness.

jtth 13y ago

It looks hideous on OS X 10.9 in Safari. But the ideas are good and sound.

ominous_prime 13y ago
And chrome on 10.9 is just as bad. It's painful to read.
- falcolas 13y ago
  And Firefox on 10.9 as well. The font didn't seem to anti-alias well, making it painful to read.