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A font with strokes 1px thick when you scale it to 200 percent? What a great design! I'm sure it looks so cool on the designer's retina display. You don't want

A font with strokes 1px thick when you scale it to 200 percent? What a great design! I'm sure it looks so cool on the designer's retina display. You don't want me to read your page? Fine, then I won't. Edit: Hehe, now the contrast of my comment is about as bad as the contrast of the blog. I guess criticizing Silicon Valley's favorite design fad of the 2010s is too much for the HN crowd to stomach.

function_seven 12y ago
That is irony, your comment's contrast being the result of your complaint. :) In general, I don't think webfonts are yet appropriate for body text. headlines, maybe. But it's a crap shoot if your reader's UA will render them right or not it seems.
- currysausage 12y ago
  > In general, I don't think webfonts are yet appropriate for body text. Personally, I would agree with that, yes. For body text, I highly prefer a screen-optimized Arial or Georgia over any oh-so-trendy webfont. But I acknowledge that this is the fault of Windows' subpar font rendering. I understand it if designers who have access to a OS with better rendering, and probably even to a hi-res display, don't want to be stuck with "font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;" for life. But this is not the point that I was trying to make. Here, they choose a font-face/font-size combination that makes the strokes 0.5px thick. It just physically can't work. What I see on the screen is probably just the artifacts of subpixel hinting. It will look better or worse depending on the rendering engine, but it's still a terrible design to rely on the half-pixels.
  - aikah 12y ago
    I agree, the site is just not readable on my windows machine. If one is going to use thin fonts, he should use it on titles ,not in the body of the text. I'm really suprised at people telling you to "buy glasses or change computer screen",this is typography 101,and this website (HN) often boast about taking UI/UX seriously. Designers,dont do fancy stuffs unless you test them on a wide range of browser or devices.This is a design fail.
nacs 12y ago
That's just the 300-weight version of the Lato font, one of the most widely used fonts on the internet. If you have trouble reading it, you may need a new monitor or get your eyesight checked.
- currysausage 12y ago
  > you may need a new monitor No, I'm actually perfectly fine with my Eizo. It's not its fault that it isn't able to show half-pixels. That's by design. > the Lato font, one of the most widely used fonts on the internet I seriously doubt that this is the case. Last time I stumbled across it was heartbleed.com, and I had to use the F12 console to de-Lato the page, that's why I remember. That was half a year ago, thankfully. If you spend your day reading about cool parallax scrolling plug-ins for your site, then you might see a lot more Lato than I do, yeah.
  - nacs 12y ago
    > I seriously doubt that this is the case http://www.google.com/fonts#Analytics:total http://www.google.com/fonts#Analytics:total . 5th most popular font at the moment ( 2,059,357,755 views for Lato in the last 7 days and 64+ billion in the past year). And that doesn't even include the Typekit deployments (or locally hosted ones).
    - currysausage 12y ago
      > 5th most popular font at the moment So, Google Web Fonts now is the benchmark for professional screen typography? None of the sites that I visit on a regular basis use Google Web Fonts. The only one using any webfont for body text is The Guardian, which uses an excellent custom font designed by Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes.
      - nacs 12y ago
        > So, Google Web Fonts now is the benchmark for professional screen typography? It's certainly a better benchmark than "none of the sites that I visit on a regular basis"... And if hard numbers like 64 billion+ views per year don't convince you then I won't bother.
discardorama 12y ago
We nerds dwell more on the function, than the form. Would, say, Knuth's notes be less useful if they were written in Comic Sans? Sure, they'd be hard(er) to read, but the message would be the same.
- javajosh 12y ago
  Strictly speaking, yes, Knuth's writing would indeed be less useful in Comic Sans as fewer people would read, and hence use, them.
- phaemon 12y ago
  Knuth is a remarkably odd choice of example for this, since the whole reason for the existence of TeX is his dislike of the form of the time.
lake99 12y ago
I feel your pain. Most of my monitors are 100-dpi. Most new computers screens sold are approx. 100-dpi. I guess these UX developers use the latest macs with retina displays, and create eye-sores for the rest of us.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  I've been using the same ~85dpi Samsung SyncMaster monitor since 2007. I see no problem with the font.
  - lake99 12y ago
    Hmm. I wonder if there's something wrong with my config then. Does it not look like this [1] for you? [1] https://imgur.com/PMBofq0 https://imgur.com/PMBofq0
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      Nope, much darker: https://imgur.com/FsuVIot https://imgur.com/FsuVIot That's from Chrome on OS X 10.9. Firefox and Safari seem identical. I get something a little closer to yours in form from IE 11 in a Windows 7 VM, but still significantly darker: http://imgur.com/FzjsKJu http://imgur.com/FzjsKJu Firefox on Windows seems identical or darker. The closest I can get is Chrome on Windows 7, which does a bad job with this font, though it's not exactly identical to yours: http://imgur.com/YwsxMhl http://imgur.com/YwsxMhl As I recall, Chrome does its own font rendering, and tries, on Windows, to match Windows' rendering, and does an even worse job of it than Windows does.
      - lake99 12y ago
        On my current system, Konqueror renders quite like the Chrome screenshot that I posted earlier. Firefox is much lighter. Thanks to your samples, I think I can tweak knobs on my system to render better. Edit: Yup, my infinality has a setting that it calls "MacIsh". Switching to that made the webpage a bit more bearable: https://imgur.com/na1gTwC https://imgur.com/na1gTwC

function_seven 12y ago

That is irony, your comment's contrast being the result of your complaint. :) In general, I don't think webfonts are yet appropriate for body text. headlines, maybe. But it's a crap shoot if your reader's UA will render them right or not it seems.

currysausage 12y ago
> In general, I don't think webfonts are yet appropriate for body text. Personally, I would agree with that, yes. For body text, I highly prefer a screen-optimized Arial or Georgia over any oh-so-trendy webfont. But I acknowledge that this is the fault of Windows' subpar font rendering. I understand it if designers who have access to a OS with better rendering, and probably even to a hi-res display, don't want to be stuck with "font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;" for life. But this is not the point that I was trying to make. Here, they choose a font-face/font-size combination that makes the strokes 0.5px thick. It just physically can't work. What I see on the screen is probably just the artifacts of subpixel hinting. It will look better or worse depending on the rendering engine, but it's still a terrible design to rely on the half-pixels.
- aikah 12y ago
  I agree, the site is just not readable on my windows machine. If one is going to use thin fonts, he should use it on titles ,not in the body of the text. I'm really suprised at people telling you to "buy glasses or change computer screen",this is typography 101,and this website (HN) often boast about taking UI/UX seriously. Designers,dont do fancy stuffs unless you test them on a wide range of browser or devices.This is a design fail.

nacs 12y ago

That's just the 300-weight version of the Lato font, one of the most widely used fonts on the internet. If you have trouble reading it, you may need a new monitor or get your eyesight checked.

currysausage 12y ago
> you may need a new monitor No, I'm actually perfectly fine with my Eizo. It's not its fault that it isn't able to show half-pixels. That's by design. > the Lato font, one of the most widely used fonts on the internet I seriously doubt that this is the case. Last time I stumbled across it was heartbleed.com, and I had to use the F12 console to de-Lato the page, that's why I remember. That was half a year ago, thankfully. If you spend your day reading about cool parallax scrolling plug-ins for your site, then you might see a lot more Lato than I do, yeah.
- nacs 12y ago
  > I seriously doubt that this is the case http://www.google.com/fonts#Analytics:total http://www.google.com/fonts#Analytics:total . 5th most popular font at the moment ( 2,059,357,755 views for Lato in the last 7 days and 64+ billion in the past year). And that doesn't even include the Typekit deployments (or locally hosted ones).
  - currysausage 12y ago
    > 5th most popular font at the moment So, Google Web Fonts now is the benchmark for professional screen typography? None of the sites that I visit on a regular basis use Google Web Fonts. The only one using any webfont for body text is The Guardian, which uses an excellent custom font designed by Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes.
    - nacs 12y ago
      > So, Google Web Fonts now is the benchmark for professional screen typography? It's certainly a better benchmark than "none of the sites that I visit on a regular basis"... And if hard numbers like 64 billion+ views per year don't convince you then I won't bother.

discardorama 12y ago

We nerds dwell more on the function, than the form. Would, say, Knuth's notes be less useful if they were written in Comic Sans? Sure, they'd be hard(er) to read, but the message would be the same.

javajosh 12y ago
Strictly speaking, yes, Knuth's writing would indeed be less useful in Comic Sans as fewer people would read, and hence use, them.
phaemon 12y ago
Knuth is a remarkably odd choice of example for this, since the whole reason for the existence of TeX is his dislike of the form of the time.

lake99 12y ago

I feel your pain. Most of my monitors are 100-dpi. Most new computers screens sold are approx. 100-dpi. I guess these UX developers use the latest macs with retina displays, and create eye-sores for the rest of us.

nknighthb 12y ago
I've been using the same ~85dpi Samsung SyncMaster monitor since 2007. I see no problem with the font.
- lake99 12y ago
  Hmm. I wonder if there's something wrong with my config then. Does it not look like this [1] for you? [1] https://imgur.com/PMBofq0 https://imgur.com/PMBofq0
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    Nope, much darker: https://imgur.com/FsuVIot https://imgur.com/FsuVIot That's from Chrome on OS X 10.9. Firefox and Safari seem identical. I get something a little closer to yours in form from IE 11 in a Windows 7 VM, but still significantly darker: http://imgur.com/FzjsKJu http://imgur.com/FzjsKJu Firefox on Windows seems identical or darker. The closest I can get is Chrome on Windows 7, which does a bad job with this font, though it's not exactly identical to yours: http://imgur.com/YwsxMhl http://imgur.com/YwsxMhl As I recall, Chrome does its own font rendering, and tries, on Windows, to match Windows' rendering, and does an even worse job of it than Windows does.
    - lake99 12y ago
      On my current system, Konqueror renders quite like the Chrome screenshot that I posted earlier. Firefox is much lighter. Thanks to your samples, I think I can tweak knobs on my system to render better. Edit: Yup, my infinality has a setting that it calls "MacIsh". Switching to that made the webpage a bit more bearable: https://imgur.com/na1gTwC https://imgur.com/na1gTwC