On 05/03/14 14:51, Max wrote:
Hey Isarra, that's some good questions.
I'll try to answer as concise as possible, but in case you're
interested, here's the detailed version:
https://gist.github.com/awesomephant/9352699
*> Why would this be the best experience?*
In our case, a good experience means being able to *read stuff* and
understand the content as easy as possible. Therefore, a typographic
setup that makes reading as easy as possible makes for a good experience.
But why would /this/ be the best for that? How do we know it's easier?
*> But why would we, for an interface for an online
encyclopedia and
similar, need something so specific at all?*
Our goal is to help people get information they need by /reading
articles/. It makes sense to make reading an article as easy as
possible, because ultimately that will help people understand the
content. The typeface is an important part of good typography and
should be chosen carefully, even though there's other factors such as
spacing and size that need to be considered.
When operating systems determine their font renderers, do they
completely neglect to consider any of this? Are the system interfaces
and other applications illegible because they chose bad fonts and didn't
consider spacing and size? Because that would be somewhat surprising
unless it's a bunch of non-toolkit apps in twm or something. Otherwise,
though, things are probably fine.
And I'd put forward that one of the biggest factors in what people find
easy to read is /what they're used to//reading/. Consider how people
usually complain the most when something changes, regardless of how it
changes. Consider how I love DejaVu Sans' width and miss it when I'm on
windows, despite how the narrower windows default Arial renders just
fine there (it doesn't render well at all in smaller sizes on a lot of
linux), whereas a mac user I know who was used to Helvetica/Arial
thought DejaVu Sans' width was ridiculous and wondered how I could even
tolerate it. Consider handwriting - you would probably have some
difficulty reading my handwriting, and yet I have no trouble at all with
it so long as all of the letters are there. Consider cursive vs print -
people who aren't used to reading/writing in cursive often have trouble
reading that as well, to the point where some simply can't.
On computers and other devices, what people are usually most used to
reading is what the /system/ uses. Because that means most of the things
/on/ the system will also be using it.
*> If there is a very specific 'right
font', why aren't we using it as
a webfont?*
I think webfonts are amazing, and we should definitely use them.
However, even with webfonts using a font stack is a good idea. What if
the user has an old browser that doesn't support webfonts? What if the
user chose not to download font files to save bandwidth? In those
cases we still want to do our best to ensure a decent reading
experience, which isn't always possible with the default fallbacks.
Our font stack would look something like this:
'Fancy pants Webfont Pro', DejaVu Sans, Arial, sans-serif;
Webfonts may be amazing, but that does not necessarily mean they are a
good idea to use in most cases. Game-related sites and anything else
maintaining the look and feel of a certain theme/genre are good use
cases, as well as when you need character support and don't expect your
users to necessarily have anything installed for it (ULS does this), but
without a specific need for them, I would argue webfonts are best
avoided entirely. The problems they pose are huge:
* The cross-platform rendering issues that are normally encountered
with locally installed fonts can become much more severe (this
appears in particular in windows and especially chrome where the
weight handling can render a webfont completely illegible)
* Download sizes are an issue
* When you need to handle support for multiple character sets it
quickly becomes problematic (and on top of that, an improperly set
up webfont can even kill a system's normal fallback handling for
unsupported character sets)
That last bit could probably be mitigated/resolved by RL by only serving
up relevant character sets for the page in question, but such is
unfortunately a decent way off from being implemented.
The others, too, can be overcome or deemed acceptable if there's a real
need, but is there here?
*> Why did the generic 'serif' and 'sans-serif' become insufficient?*
They were in fact never sufficient. But for quite some time, web
technology didn't allow us to do it better. Now that it does (with
webfonts and finer typographic control), why shouldn't we go ahead and
improve our user experience?
Never were sufficient? Prove it. What's the evidence?
Hope that answered your questions, feel free to hit me up if something
isn't clear.
Best, max.
@awesomephant
All that said, I do appreciate the response.
-I