7 ms·

> Most designers will cringe at the thought of showing users a fallback system font. Explaining them that web is not paper, helps removing a lot of this child

> Most designers will cringe at the thought of showing users a fallback system font. Explaining them that web is not paper, helps removing a lot of this childish behaviour.

deanc 5y ago
Except it doesn't. The usual fallback I've experienced (been told to do) to this is to preload the whole site behind a loading bar instead :)
- sdoering 5y ago
  I was told so recently. But it wasn't even for the font loading. It was to load the animated transition to transit from nothing to the entry page. So to instead of dropping (or at least thinking about optimizing) the loading transition the designer (with a straight face) proposed a loading bar for the loading of the loading animation. I was lost for words. [Edit: typo]
mrweasel 5y ago
I’m sure there’s a few exception, but why do anyone care about which font is used as long as the basics such as fixed or sans serif is applied correctly? The answer is most likely branding, but I don’t recall landing on a company website and going: “That’s not the font from their design guidelines. This is unacceptable, I shall take my business elsewhere” All this tweaking and hacking font loading is a vaste of time.
- thingsgoup 5y ago
  I gather from your comment that you don’t do frontend. I don’t either. I also think it’s a waste of time. But I think you and I are not the intended audience. I think frontend people are trying to design an experience for users. The same way you or I might be designing an architecture for the system. They want it to look and feel a certain way in order to provoke a response.
  - MrPatan 5y ago
    I do front end. It's a waste of time. Pick a common one you like and move on.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > why do anyone care about which font is used as long as the basics such as fixed or sans serif is applied correctly? Because typography is a means of communication.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    I still don’t see how picking a custom font over a default one contributed much to communication. Sure, the font need to be legable, clear destinction between letters all that stuff, but the system fonts is most likely better than a custom one for those things anyway.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Design and art communicate. In fact, that's all they do. Fonts are associated with different periods of time, different groups of people, different artistic and even philosophical movements. Picking a font can help communicate how you see yourself and what you are trying to achieve. A picture paints a thousand words. A world without typography would be a poorer world.
      - zelphirkalt 5y ago
        Then why not share all typography with everyone under a license, that allows every OS maker to include all the fonts they want plus allowing users to choose what else to install and then only use system fonts? That way we can have it all, fast websites, without additional secret server side tracking, and the fonts of the system being used and the artist getting their message communicated. No need for any web font.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        I guess there aren’t any commercial incentives to do that. But that doesn’t change that typography is valuable.
        zelphirkalt 5y ago
- setr 5y ago
  Branding is bit subtler than that — you’re not going to really say anything about Target’s consistent styling, versus Walmart’s fairly austere aesthetic, but you definitely get a different “feel” from each, before looking at their actual contents/stock. I don’t know whether fonts are really that important to the total equation, but “not terrible enough to walk out the door” is generally a very low bar to meet when designing a thing. Another example in the app space — you know enterprise apps will get the job done, but they’re downright unpleasant to use; from aesthetics to workflow efficiency, they just barely hover over “dealing with it isn’t worth the output”. But that’s generally not where you want things to sit as a design goal.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    I’m not sure I understand the point about enterprise apps, because that can go both ways. Custom company application tend to be the worst, because they apply all the company branding guidelines, rather than just applying to system defaults.
    - hexo 5y ago
      yup, users then even feel violated because some "great" manager somewhere told devs to screw over users settings and for example force user to look at animations, which is like 100 times worse than fonts mentioned earlier.
    - setr 5y ago
      I’m not making the case that one being better than the other, or really trying to say anything about custom vs enterprise. My main point is simply that there’s a significant gap between “it can be used” and “it can be used well” — and a designer’s primary job is to bridge that gap (generally the engineer in us takes us to “it can be used”). That (some? many? majority?) designers aren’t competent is a separate concern… but their abstract goals are fairly obvious and intuitive if difficult to specify concretely And we understand this intuitively, because there are many apps in our section of the universe that fall under it can be used — back-office apps, enterprise apps, etc a constant offender (not say good ones don’t exist, or bad custom apps don’t exist, or bad designers/designs don’t exist… etc — but we’ve all probably encountered a good few that are astoundingly unpleasant to use)
- hexo 5y ago
  Exactly!
l0b0 5y ago
I guess it's a good thing the web is built for users rather than designers, then, isn't it? Oh wait. On a more serious note, screw all the font **ery. Settings → Language and Appearance → Advanced → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. Better to have some crappy websites glitch out a bit than get a headache from trying to read 200 different fonts in a day.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Given freetype's long history of buffer overflows, I think disabling web fonts is a very good idea.
- s5806533 5y ago
  > Settings → Language and Appearance → Advanced → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. Done! Thanks for the reminder!
  - iforgotpassword 5y ago
    I switched to using ublock origin to do that, since I can quickly add an exception for a site. Some sites use fonts for icons. Most of them are still usable but just look a bit silly, but sometimes it's annoying to the point that I want to add an exception.
    - l0b0 5y ago
      Let's see if I get this right: (0. Install uBlock Origin) 1. Re-enable web fonts 2. In the main UO settings, check "Block remote fonts"? 3. Refresh a page 4. Click the UO icon, and then "more" until I see an icon titled "Click to no longer block remote fonts on this site" 5. Click 6. Refresh the page Repeat 4-6 for relevant sites. Any caveats?
      - iforgotpassword 5y ago
        Yep that's how I so that, although in step 4 I don't have to click "more", I immediately have an icon with a capital A that toggles fonts at the bottom. But maybe I configured it to automatically expand something that is by default hidden behind a more button... I honestly don't remember.
rtpg 5y ago
I do think that sites should strive to "just work" with nice system fonts (and respect user agent settings), but this is just an obtuse answer. You can ship your own fonts. Everyone and their dog uses one of two web browser engines. People want their websites to "look right". You can offer a fully specified look!
- Gigachad 5y ago
  And there is always someone on XP who complains your website looks like crap because their defaults look like crap while every other website bundled it’s own fonts and inputs.
  - hexo 5y ago
    Yea, windows XP has to be supported, sure. But then suddenly drop support for firefox because no one uses that. Meh.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
i have tried to ask people a simple question. "why do you think you know fonts better than microsoft or apple?" not to even talk about linux for a moment here. do these multi trillion dollar companies making operating systems do a shit job at fonts that each and every website developer needs to use google fonts that increase dependency on third parties than using system default fonts?
- Leherenn 5y ago
  Not particularly a fan of custom fonts, but fonts are not one size fits all. Apple or Microsoft default fonts are designed for the general use case, and other fonts might be more suited in a different context. Whether that's worth the cost, that's a different question.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    come on. i am not expecting to visit an art gallery when i browse the current website or your local news portal or a blog or youtube. do you really think each and every website "needs" to individually tailor fonts to their "exact millimeter position" or otherwise the result will be utter garbage? >and other fonts might be more suited in a different context that is why "general use case" is my point. can you point me a specific example of where my current default "noto sans 10 pt" in kde neon is NOT suited for a specific use case? i want to see that unless i use a developer decided font, i would be totally off base, i would miss the plot, i would read garbage, etc etc.
- oefrha 5y ago
  Yes, Microsoft does do a shit job at fonts. Many Android vendors too. Don’t even get me started on Linux.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    cool. why don't you kindly ask them to fix the fonts by a bug request instead of everyone just assuming the stuff is shit
Raed667 5y ago
Designers want the web-app to look like their figma. Most are not willing to compromise on that. It takes senior engineers (with weight in the company) to lead the effort to force design to concede on certain things like this.
- Cullinet 5y ago
  everything that I use computers for has been ultimately to produce aesthetics to my exacting standards a example of which is the 8 years taken from first sketch of my redesign for the company logo to first example of use. But I refuse to allow applications like Figma on my company computing assets. You probably wouldn't be hired if you used such things as part of your work flow anyway. Good design begins with pencil and paper and writing down the words describing what you are trying to accomplish. Art has its own internal function and architectural laws of physics and materials sciences. Great art is like cathedrals (of very well thought out bazaars) the culmination of not only one or more crucial leaders of the design, but the ecosystem of cultural heritage and interpretation and conversation and argument that you are communicating with the viewer. When your typical Figma dogmatic sees their font rendering to their knee jerk repulsion that's really being affronted to have their South Park Authority challenged, all I am seeing is the subtleties and nuances of a critic composition potentially becoming unstable rather in the manner a engineer sees weakening structures and worries about how long and effectively can the edifice perform it's intended task.
  - bschwindHN 5y ago
    I can't tell if this is a joke or not, we're talking about websites.
lelandfe 5y ago
And for that matter, let’s put the kibosh on the childish act of using colors as well
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pville 5y ago
Maybe it's time to bring back "Weaponized" Comic Sans: http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.html http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.htm...

> Most designers will cringe at the thought of showing users a fallback system font. Explaining them that web is not paper, helps removing a lot of this childish behaviour.

deanc 5y ago

Except it doesn't. The usual fallback I've experienced (been told to do) to this is to preload the whole site behind a loading bar instead :)

sdoering 5y ago
I was told so recently. But it wasn't even for the font loading. It was to load the animated transition to transit from nothing to the entry page. So to instead of dropping (or at least thinking about optimizing) the loading transition the designer (with a straight face) proposed a loading bar for the loading of the loading animation. I was lost for words. [Edit: typo]

mrweasel 5y ago

I’m sure there’s a few exception, but why do anyone care about which font is used as long as the basics such as fixed or sans serif is applied correctly? The answer is most likely branding, but I don’t recall landing on a company website and going: “That’s not the font from their design guidelines. This is unacceptable, I shall take my business elsewhere” All this tweaking and hacking font loading is a vaste of time.

thingsgoup 5y ago
I gather from your comment that you don’t do frontend. I don’t either. I also think it’s a waste of time. But I think you and I are not the intended audience. I think frontend people are trying to design an experience for users. The same way you or I might be designing an architecture for the system. They want it to look and feel a certain way in order to provoke a response.
- MrPatan 5y ago
  I do front end. It's a waste of time. Pick a common one you like and move on.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> why do anyone care about which font is used as long as the basics such as fixed or sans serif is applied correctly? Because typography is a means of communication.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I still don’t see how picking a custom font over a default one contributed much to communication. Sure, the font need to be legable, clear destinction between letters all that stuff, but the system fonts is most likely better than a custom one for those things anyway.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Design and art communicate. In fact, that's all they do. Fonts are associated with different periods of time, different groups of people, different artistic and even philosophical movements. Picking a font can help communicate how you see yourself and what you are trying to achieve. A picture paints a thousand words. A world without typography would be a poorer world.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      Then why not share all typography with everyone under a license, that allows every OS maker to include all the fonts they want plus allowing users to choose what else to install and then only use system fonts? That way we can have it all, fast websites, without additional secret server side tracking, and the fonts of the system being used and the artist getting their message communicated. No need for any web font.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        I guess there aren’t any commercial incentives to do that. But that doesn’t change that typography is valuable.
        zelphirkalt 5y ago
setr 5y ago
Branding is bit subtler than that — you’re not going to really say anything about Target’s consistent styling, versus Walmart’s fairly austere aesthetic, but you definitely get a different “feel” from each, before looking at their actual contents/stock. I don’t know whether fonts are really that important to the total equation, but “not terrible enough to walk out the door” is generally a very low bar to meet when designing a thing. Another example in the app space — you know enterprise apps will get the job done, but they’re downright unpleasant to use; from aesthetics to workflow efficiency, they just barely hover over “dealing with it isn’t worth the output”. But that’s generally not where you want things to sit as a design goal.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  I’m not sure I understand the point about enterprise apps, because that can go both ways. Custom company application tend to be the worst, because they apply all the company branding guidelines, rather than just applying to system defaults.
  - hexo 5y ago
    yup, users then even feel violated because some "great" manager somewhere told devs to screw over users settings and for example force user to look at animations, which is like 100 times worse than fonts mentioned earlier.
  - setr 5y ago
    I’m not making the case that one being better than the other, or really trying to say anything about custom vs enterprise. My main point is simply that there’s a significant gap between “it can be used” and “it can be used well” — and a designer’s primary job is to bridge that gap (generally the engineer in us takes us to “it can be used”). That (some? many? majority?) designers aren’t competent is a separate concern… but their abstract goals are fairly obvious and intuitive if difficult to specify concretely And we understand this intuitively, because there are many apps in our section of the universe that fall under it can be used — back-office apps, enterprise apps, etc a constant offender (not say good ones don’t exist, or bad custom apps don’t exist, or bad designers/designs don’t exist… etc — but we’ve all probably encountered a good few that are astoundingly unpleasant to use)
hexo 5y ago
Exactly!

l0b0 5y ago

I guess it's a good thing the web is built for users rather than designers, then, isn't it? Oh wait. On a more serious note, screw all the font **ery. Settings → Language and Appearance → Advanced → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. Better to have some crappy websites glitch out a bit than get a headache from trying to read 200 different fonts in a day.

foxfluff 5y ago
Given freetype's long history of buffer overflows, I think disabling web fonts is a very good idea.
s5806533 5y ago
> Settings → Language and Appearance → Advanced → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. Done! Thanks for the reminder!
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  I switched to using ublock origin to do that, since I can quickly add an exception for a site. Some sites use fonts for icons. Most of them are still usable but just look a bit silly, but sometimes it's annoying to the point that I want to add an exception.
  - l0b0 5y ago
    Let's see if I get this right: (0. Install uBlock Origin) 1. Re-enable web fonts 2. In the main UO settings, check "Block remote fonts"? 3. Refresh a page 4. Click the UO icon, and then "more" until I see an icon titled "Click to no longer block remote fonts on this site" 5. Click 6. Refresh the page Repeat 4-6 for relevant sites. Any caveats?
    - iforgotpassword 5y ago
      Yep that's how I so that, although in step 4 I don't have to click "more", I immediately have an icon with a capital A that toggles fonts at the bottom. But maybe I configured it to automatically expand something that is by default hidden behind a more button... I honestly don't remember.

rtpg 5y ago

I do think that sites should strive to "just work" with nice system fonts (and respect user agent settings), but this is just an obtuse answer. You can ship your own fonts. Everyone and their dog uses one of two web browser engines. People want their websites to "look right". You can offer a fully specified look!

Gigachad 5y ago
And there is always someone on XP who complains your website looks like crap because their defaults look like crap while every other website bundled it’s own fonts and inputs.
- hexo 5y ago
  Yea, windows XP has to be supported, sure. But then suddenly drop support for firefox because no one uses that. Meh.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

i have tried to ask people a simple question. "why do you think you know fonts better than microsoft or apple?" not to even talk about linux for a moment here. do these multi trillion dollar companies making operating systems do a shit job at fonts that each and every website developer needs to use google fonts that increase dependency on third parties than using system default fonts?

Leherenn 5y ago
Not particularly a fan of custom fonts, but fonts are not one size fits all. Apple or Microsoft default fonts are designed for the general use case, and other fonts might be more suited in a different context. Whether that's worth the cost, that's a different question.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  come on. i am not expecting to visit an art gallery when i browse the current website or your local news portal or a blog or youtube. do you really think each and every website "needs" to individually tailor fonts to their "exact millimeter position" or otherwise the result will be utter garbage? >and other fonts might be more suited in a different context that is why "general use case" is my point. can you point me a specific example of where my current default "noto sans 10 pt" in kde neon is NOT suited for a specific use case? i want to see that unless i use a developer decided font, i would be totally off base, i would miss the plot, i would read garbage, etc etc.
oefrha 5y ago
Yes, Microsoft does do a shit job at fonts. Many Android vendors too. Don’t even get me started on Linux.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  cool. why don't you kindly ask them to fix the fonts by a bug request instead of everyone just assuming the stuff is shit

Raed667 5y ago

Designers want the web-app to look like their figma. Most are not willing to compromise on that. It takes senior engineers (with weight in the company) to lead the effort to force design to concede on certain things like this.

Cullinet 5y ago
everything that I use computers for has been ultimately to produce aesthetics to my exacting standards a example of which is the 8 years taken from first sketch of my redesign for the company logo to first example of use. But I refuse to allow applications like Figma on my company computing assets. You probably wouldn't be hired if you used such things as part of your work flow anyway. Good design begins with pencil and paper and writing down the words describing what you are trying to accomplish. Art has its own internal function and architectural laws of physics and materials sciences. Great art is like cathedrals (of very well thought out bazaars) the culmination of not only one or more crucial leaders of the design, but the ecosystem of cultural heritage and interpretation and conversation and argument that you are communicating with the viewer. When your typical Figma dogmatic sees their font rendering to their knee jerk repulsion that's really being affronted to have their South Park Authority challenged, all I am seeing is the subtleties and nuances of a critic composition potentially becoming unstable rather in the manner a engineer sees weakening structures and worries about how long and effectively can the edifice perform it's intended task.
- bschwindHN 5y ago
  I can't tell if this is a joke or not, we're talking about websites.

lelandfe 5y ago

And for that matter, let’s put the kibosh on the childish act of using colors as well

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pville 5y ago

Maybe it's time to bring back "Weaponized" Comic Sans: http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.html http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-libressl/mgp00025.htm...