Open Sans, how do we love thee?

A short list of body fonts that render consistently well in smaller sizes:<p><pre><code> Open Sans Source Sans Pro Droid Sans Lato Pontano Sans Proxima Nova Museo Sans PT Sans Segoe UI Tondo Istok Web Interval Sans (Light) </code></pre> <a href="http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Source+Sans+Pro" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Source+Sans+Pro</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Droid+Sans" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Droid+Sans</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Pontano+Sans" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Pontano+Sans</a><p><a href="https://typekit.com/fonts/proxima-nova" rel="nofollow">https://typekit.com/fonts/proxima-nova</a><p><a href="https://typekit.com/fonts/museo-sans" rel="nofollow">https://typekit.com/fonts/museo-sans</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans</a><p><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=331" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=3...</a><p><a href="http://www.webink.com/face/1133" rel="nofollow">http://www.webink.com/face/1133</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Istok+Web" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Istok+Web</a><p><a href="http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/mostardesign/interval" rel="nofollow">http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/mostardesign/interval</a>

I'd add PT Sans as also a great, free sans-serif font. In fact, sometimes I can't tell them apart: see the pairing here:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans#pairings" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans#pairings</a><p>Open Sans is killing it in usage...1.9 billion font views in the last week, according to Google Fonts API: <a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans#stats" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans#stats</a> , which is more than 2.5x as popular as the next popular Google Font, Oswald: <a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Oswald#stats" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Oswald#stats</a><p>I'd love to see Open Sans used so frequently that Helvetica becomes fresh, again.

Source Sans Pro is another great open source font, and it's by Adobe.<p><a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro.html" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/08/source-sans-pro....</a>

Since we are on this topic, I have a public service announcement: even though light Open Sans looks great and is trendy for headings, <i>using a light font weight for body text is a bad idea</i> because it makes it difficult to read. I keep coming across examples on the web, always with bad results.<p>Thank you.

Open Sans like all the other Helvetica replacements (except Arial) are only cool the first few days. After that it's like, nah, gimme back Helvetica (which have been cool since the 70s):<p><a href="http://helveticafilm.com" rel="nofollow">http://helveticafilm.com</a>

Didn't they effectively increased the "download size" of pages and slowed the rendering down because now pages depend on the font which has to be downloaded, at the same time as they made the rendering on Chrome on Windows looking worse? Is that progress?

All this doesn't matter to me while I cannot increase font size by zooming in the page. Why does it happen to more and more web sites? I zoom in because font is too small for me, but font size doesn't increase, only paragraph width increases!

I am baffled.<p>OpenSans renders fine in IE and Firefox, but Chrome doesn't do it. Here is what I get on the WP page:<p><a href="http://imgur.com/XgmEN9P" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/XgmEN9P</a><p>It is the same for every other site that uses opensans.<p>Windows 7, Chrome 26.0.1410.64 m, Font Size: Medium, Page Zoom, 100%.<p>Any ideas?

Recent-ish Firefox Android builds use Open Sans.<p><a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/03/improved-type-on-firefox-for-android/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/03/improved-type-on-firefox...</a>

So, it turns out that when you have selectively added Open Sans typefaces as system fonts, this is what all these sites start to look like: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/kgpY6WO.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/kgpY6WO.png</a><p>I had added two densities so I could muck around with stuff in Pixelmator and was wondering why everyone had chosen the horrible slender version for body text on various sites, but apparently it just means whatever the system collection provides gets priority (which makes sense).

Any recommendations for open source serif fonts?

This would be why my iPhone displays the page without text for 30 seconds until the font loads. Much as I like web fonts, using them for body text is painful.

I'm a frequent user and massive proponent of Open Sans, which I think allows me to say how much I wish it had a Hairline and Black weight. I end up using Lato for a Futura-esque heavy weight. (eg: <a href="http://techevents.co" rel="nofollow">http://techevents.co</a>)<p>EDIT: Lato for reference <a href="http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lato</a>

Looking at <i>both</i> of those screenshots, am I the only one who finds font-rendering on Macs very blurry and extremely hard to read?<p>So blurry in fact, I find it's hard to tell that there are different fonts in those two screenshots. They just both look like text smudged over a while matte when switching back and forth between them.

There are a bunch of examples of Open Sans in the wild up on Typio: <a href="http://www.typ.io/fonts/open_sans" rel="nofollow">http://www.typ.io/fonts/open_sans</a>

"It’s beautifully legible" I couldn`t disagree more. The body text set with opensans on Windows(especially in chrome) looks awful.

On a second visit, can you guys see webpages with webfonts without delay? My cache does not seem to work.

It would be great if Open Sans could be part of default browser fonts along with Helvetica and Arial.

&#62; Let us count the ways.<p>I count at most one.