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Sometimes it's not even obscure OS/browser combinations--I've seen sites that were clearly designed on a Mac and never tested on Windows, because the text is co

Sometimes it's not even obscure OS/browser combinations--I've seen sites that were clearly designed on a Mac and never tested on Windows, because the text is completely unreadable on Windows 7 in any browser. I'm all for web fonts, but designers have to test them across at least the major platforms.

Silhouette 12y ago
Sadly, what you describe seems to happen all the time. As an obvious example, it amazes me how many sites continue to use Proxima Nova as a web font. It renders poorly at almost any common size in almost every Windows browser. One thing that has surprised me with web fonts is that there seem to be plenty of respectable choices available for free from the likes of Google Fonts and Font Squirrel, and relatively few fonts I would even consider for serious work from commercial font-as-a-service shops like Typekit and Cloud.Typography. After years of me telling people that professional quality results need professional quality fonts, the industry seems to be doing its best to prove me wrong. I suspect the main difference is that the good freebies were designed for on-screen use from the start, while many of the commercial ones are adapted from existing print fonts already available from the likes of Adobe and Hoefler & Co. Unfortunately, many of those designs simply don't adapt well to the lower resolutions and anti-aliasing used for on-screen rendering. The trouble is, I don't really care why a font on my visitor's screen doesn't look good, and neither do they. The only thing that matters is that it doesn't look good, and in many cases that seems likely to remain the case until much higher resolutions become the norm for all screen sizes. Until then, as demonstrations like the one we're talking about show very well, there are plenty of decent screen-optimised fonts available from other sources, and they don't come with the financial and legal headaches of the rent-a-font services.

Silhouette 12y ago

Sadly, what you describe seems to happen all the time. As an obvious example, it amazes me how many sites continue to use Proxima Nova as a web font. It renders poorly at almost any common size in almost every Windows browser. One thing that has surprised me with web fonts is that there seem to be plenty of respectable choices available for free from the likes of Google Fonts and Font Squirrel, and relatively few fonts I would even consider for serious work from commercial font-as-a-service shops like Typekit and Cloud.Typography. After years of me telling people that professional quality results need professional quality fonts, the industry seems to be doing its best to prove me wrong. I suspect the main difference is that the good freebies were designed for on-screen use from the start, while many of the commercial ones are adapted from existing print fonts already available from the likes of Adobe and Hoefler & Co. Unfortunately, many of those designs simply don't adapt well to the lower resolutions and anti-aliasing used for on-screen rendering. The trouble is, I don't really care why a font on my visitor's screen doesn't look good, and neither do they. The only thing that matters is that it doesn't look good, and in many cases that seems likely to remain the case until much higher resolutions become the norm for all screen sizes. Until then, as demonstrations like the one we're talking about show very well, there are plenty of decent screen-optimised fonts available from other sources, and they don't come with the financial and legal headaches of the rent-a-font services.