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Variable Fonts: The Future of Web Type (2016)

28 pointsby matthbergover 5 years ago

4 comments

bsdubernerdover 5 years ago
The future of web type since 2016 has been sad. I still disable web fonts due to their average lower quality compared to system fonts. Private websites tend to fare much better to big media outlets here: it&#x27;s rare to find good readable fonts that don&#x27;t just scream &quot;loud type&quot;...<p>Maybe even worse than that is that the font rendering I get out of newer Firefox releases (70+) or any Chromium version on linux is not on-par with system font rendering on linux.<p>I&#x27;m extremely picky when it comes down to font rendering. I read all day and I tweaked font rendering precisely to my desire. I can spot the difference between autohinting and native hinting on some fonts just by a cursory glance on a 200dpi display. Chrome&#x2F;chromium completely ignores that and gives me a horrific view of pretty much any font. Firefox hasn&#x27;t been that bad until 70+, but if you try to enable webrender it becomes just as bad as chrome.<p>You know what a web browser should do first and foremost _right_? Text rendering. I don&#x27;t care about Web Type, Open Type or any other font feature until the font that looks perfect on my editor is rendered like shit on a browser. Browser performance is worthless if I cannot read text clearly.
atrilumenover 5 years ago
I look forward to when variable fonts work well on all systems. (I really like rsms.me&#x2F;inter)<p>Meantime, rocking the system font.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tachyons.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;typography&#x2F;font-family&#x2F;system-sans-serif&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tachyons.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;typography&#x2F;font-family&#x2F;system-sans-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;css-tricks.com&#x2F;snippets&#x2F;css&#x2F;system-font-stack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;css-tricks.com&#x2F;snippets&#x2F;css&#x2F;system-font-stack</a>
lawnover 5 years ago
So when, and how, can we start using this? Are there any examples or tutorials available? Or is it so new browsers don&#x27;t support it yet?
globular-toastover 5 years ago
This seems similar to Knuth&#x27;s Metafont.