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.
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.
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.)?
> 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?
This drove me crazy on one of my (very lightweight) static sites... even on incredibly fast connections you'd always see that FOUT. I managed to solve it with font-display: fallback.
I also had to make sure I was preloading my fonts properly... not sure if this is the same guide I followed, but it's close. The only difference is that I swapped that "&display=swap" to "&display=fallback":
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.
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
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).
How do you block specific fonts? Do you mean just the CDNs for like say google fonts?
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.
So basically just use monospace, serif, or sans-serif because you can't 100% be sure it'll render correctly?
Fuck that. I don’t want my website to look ugly because 99.9% of users don’t bother to change the defaults.
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.
Some of my favourite fonts I only discovered because I first visited a site that included it in their design.
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.)?
This is not at all what the article recommends. I recommend actually reading it.
> 3. Strongly consider using only a generic family
Seems clear enough.
> 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?
This drove me crazy on one of my (very lightweight) static sites... even on incredibly fast connections you'd always see that FOUT. I managed to solve it with font-display: fallback.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/A...
I also had to make sure I was preloading my fonts properly... not sure if this is the same guide I followed, but it's close. The only difference is that I swapped that "&display=swap" to "&display=fallback":
https://dev.to/pilcrowonpaper/preloading-google-fonts-37h1
> FOUT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_of_unstyled_content
Def not just you!
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.
Arial has better support for some locales on desktop devices.
I mean... isn't this the entire point of font-family fallbacks?
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.
But why?