76 pointsby birdculture6 days ago7 comments
  • MisterKent3 days ago
    Do we really need to keep pandering to the people who block JavaScript and fonts?

    At some point it's on them to live with their choices. And just from my small sample size (I doubt there's a large sample anywhere), those people are more interested in complaining about their self-inflicted woes than engaging with the content.

    /rant

    • Chu4eeno3 days ago
      As someone who blocks fonts (with exceptions for icon/symbol fonts, and don't block javascript), I don't really care for pandering.

      I only noticed font choices when they were bad, since I started blocking custom fonts the web has become remarkably readable (and consistent).

      • shimman2 days ago
        How do you block specific fonts? Do you mean just the CDNs for like say google fonts?
    • 4thguy3 days ago
      The first few seem like sensible thoughts to me. What if the font doesn't load from the CDN for some reason?

      Just add a font fallback.

  • sometimez3 days ago
    So basically just use monospace, serif, or sans-serif because you can't 100% be sure it'll render correctly?
    • xigoi3 days ago
      Fuck that. I don’t want my website to look ugly because 99.9% of users don’t bother to change the defaults.
      • holsta3 days ago
        If browsers were slightly better at asking users, maybe we'd all have our three favourite fonts and background-, text- and link-colours instead of what someone else prefers we stare at all day.
        • ctippett3 days ago
          Some of my favourite fonts I only discovered because I first visited a site that included it in their design.
        • xigoi3 days ago
          What if I want websites to have different fonts because it gives them unique voices? Also, what about websites that use OpenType features only supported by some fonts (small caps, math, variable axes, etc.)?
      • kibwen3 days ago
        This is not at all what the article recommends. I recommend actually reading it.
        • xigoi3 days ago
          > 3. Strongly consider using only a generic family

          Seems clear enough.

  • porphyra3 days ago
    > If not inlined, subresources can fail to load for all kinds of network reasons.

    Also, it's commonly recommended to load fonts asynchronously/deferred without blocking the main page render. But I HATE it when the page jumps around as it cycles through different fonts before the real one loads. I'd rather get dinged on PageSpeed insights with "Requests are blocking the page's initial render, which may delay LCP. Deferring or inlining can move these network requests out of the critical path." rather than have everything popping about for the first second. Is it just me?

  • Grom_PE3 days ago
    What the hell.

    Just now I learned of "font-family: monospace, monospace" hack. Indeed, browsers will render the font smaller with just one "monospace".

    I've never run into it before because setting explicit font-size in pt or px avoids that weirdness.

  • mherkender3 days ago
    Arial has better support for some locales on desktop devices.
  • overvale3 days ago
    I mean... isn't this the entire point of font-family fallbacks?
  • Terretta4 days ago
    These days you can have an LLM code you up python to custom match visual metrics from your preferred web fonts to the likely user fonts across your statistical user base.