On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@wikimedia.org wrote:
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.
So, what would be the downside of listing a font like Arimo for sans-serif and Libertine for serif first in the stack? While not affecting the reader experience for a significant number of users, it would still be a symbolic expression of a preference for freely licensed fonts, and a conscious choice of a beautiful font for readers that have installed it.
There may be practical and aesthetic arguments against these or other specific free fonts; if so, it would be good to hear those arguments spelled out. I do agree that if "Helvetica Neue" is only installed on Macs and costs $30 for everyone, it's a pretty idiosyncratic choice as a primary font to specify. :-) Surely if the font requires downloading on the majority of platforms anyway, we may as well specify a free one before the non-free one.
As for webfonts, given the ULS experience I'd be very leery of the performance impact, both in terms of delivering the font and any unintended re-rendering flashes.
Erik