On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Steven Walling
<steven.walling(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Sacrificing the readability and beauty of content for
most users because there is no universally perfect solution is the kind of
hard-line approach that limits the reach of FOSS, and ultimately undermines
our goal of making something the entire world can use and enjoy.
I need to challenge the assertion that this is about most users. Here's my
understanding of the status quo: for prose, we currently specify the
neutral and non-descript "sans-serif". This results in the following fonts
on the default install on these platforms if I've done my homework
correctly:
* MS Windows: Arial(?)
* Mac: Helvetica
* Ubuntu/Firefox: DejaVu Sans (presumably other Linux variants are similar)
* Ubuntu/Chrome: Liberation Sans
* Android: Roboto
* iOS: Helvetica(?)
Note that the differences between Firefox and Chrome on Linux seem to stem
from Firefox using the OS standard font resolution mechanism, and Chrome
having a built-in heuristic that seems to be very heavily biased toward
Liberation Sans.
Under the new "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif font stack, we
get:
* MS Windows: Arial(?)
* Mac: Helvetica Neue
* Ubuntu/Firefox: Nimbus Sans L (Helvetica substitute)
* Ubuntu/Chrome: Liberation Sans (Helvetica and Arial substitute)
* Android: Roboto
* iOS: Helvetica Neue
This doesn't seem like a satisfying leap forward, given the level of
disruption.
* By our numbers[1], a plurality of our users are using MS Windows still
(and probably a majority of those using the desktop site). They got Arial
before, and they get Arial now.[2] The only way they improve their
experience is to buy Helvetica Neue or buy a product that includes
Helvetica Neue. Moreover, it's quite possible that MS Windows users will
get a crappy experience with Helvetica if they have an old Type 1 version
of it installed on their system.[3]
* It looks like this causes shift from Helvetica and Helvetica Neue on Mac
and iOS, which would seem to be to be pretty subtle. How big is the
difference on the site? I don't have access to a Mac at home, so I can't
see the difference myself, but the available screenshots don't present a
noticeable difference to me.
* If cross-platform consistency is the goal, I think this misses the mark.
In particular, Android would still be using Roboto, which has quite
different metrics than the Helvetica/Arial set of fonts. Additionally, we
still end up with a difference between our two most popular Linux browsers,
which while not as large as before, still seems unnecessary.
Here is what seems to be a reasonably well-researched article where the
author has clearly put a lot of thought into the cross-platform experience,
with the added bonus that it proposes use of free (libre) fonts:
http://www.grputland.com/2013/11/multiplatform-helvetica-like-font-stack.ht…
tl;dr: His stack still lists HelveticaNeue as the first font, but proposes
Arimo as a web font which may well look better on MS Windows. Arimo ships
with ChromeOS.
I believe it is worth more research on replacements for free and better
alternatives to Arial, because it would seem to me that it's not hard to do
better. While it's unlikely that most MS Windows users will install Arimo,
it sends a way better message if we can say "to make your Wikipedia reading
experience better, download and install the free font Arimo" than it does
to say "to make your Wikipedia experience better, please purchase Helvetica
Neue for the low low price of $29.95". Furthermore, it may be worth it to
try out the web font mechanism, and we might even be able to talk Mozilla
and/or Google into shipping a free font or two with the browser so as to
get some real install penetration with these fonts.
In general, it feels as though this iteration is centered around only
making the experience for Apple products better, while trying not to break
the experience on other platforms, which feels like a low bar. It's not
entirely clear how much hands-on effort the User Experience team has put
into Windows, Android tablets, ChromeOS, or other Linux desktops, or what
the team's goals are for those platforms. The fact that much of the
rationale for the new design centers around greater use of Helvetica Neue
specifically (which is not free, and is only available to a minority of our
users) is annoying to me, and that seems to be where a lot of the
frustration from others comes from as well.
Rob
[1]
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
[2] I don't have a modern system with Windows 7 or 8 on it, so I don't
know if they've switched to Segoe as the default. If so, we may be making
an unintentional downgrade to Arial with our new choice.
[3]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15011653/internet-explorer-automatically…