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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

I do this with all my websites. At the end of the day, a custom font just isn't very important for the vast majority of sites.

I do purposely leave Ubuntu out most of the time, because I find it's a pretty ugly font. I'm an Ubuntu OS user myself.

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Ubuntu has the advantage of having a clear distinction between uppercase i and lowercase L.

In Arial, they're indistinguishable. In Roboto, you can see the difference if they're right next to each other (l is longer than I). Segoe UI has different variants but the one I've found on the MS web site has very similar or identical lI's, just like San Francsico.

I know, fixed width fonts would fix that, but not everything that should will be in those. And especially on a programming website, that matters.

Fixed width fonts don't always fix it depending on context. Consider

    Your Passcode is: 6234024

Is that an O (oh) or a 0 (zero). It's an Oh. Of course often in a fixed width font the zero has a slash through it but if there's no zero nearby to compare it to most people won't notice.

>It's an Oh

Is it actually a zero or am I missing something?

Looks like a zero to me. Unless it was supposed to be Ø?

It's a zero, right? Easily verifiable by copy-pasting it in a Python or JavaScript interpreter.

It's pretty noticeable with the monospace font that used on my system because O is more like a circle and 0 is thinner. There is no slash, and it is fortunate because it could be mistaken with Ø otherwise.

> There is no slash, and it is fortunate because it could be mistaken with Ø otherwise.

Another option, like on my system, is that zeros have a dot in the middle.

do you mean the ohs in 'Your' or 'passcode' or are you joking?

Trebuchet MS is an okay choice for distinguishing between l and I. I like it as a happy medium between Arial and Verdana as far as "basic" fonts go.

Those differences are more important on editors or programming websites, than for general text.

Reason being that in general text we don't read based on individual letters, we recognize "shapes" of words.

That's because it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Likewise here, I've never liked the Ubuntu font. Something about it just feels slightly off, like those letter-shaped refrigerator magnets for kids.

That’s a great way to describe it.

From all the common sans-serif fonts I looked at, it's the only one that distinguishes between I and l.

> I and l

It's even more prescient considering that on my screen, those two letters look exactly the same.

Raleway does, there is certainly a lot that don't but it's certainly not the only one.

https://fonts.google.com/?preview.text=l%20I&preview.text_ty...

Noto Sans, the default on my system, used on HN, clearly distinguishes them.

How is it good with the pipe? I l | 1

edit: very good. It is also good for 0, O and Ø. It is also very readable. A very good font.

Noto Mono is used for monospace, it has the same qualities. I really recommend this set of fonts.

The noto font is the default family on Fedora Cinnamon, it’s a beautiful clear font on everything from 2560 at 14” to 4K@27.

With JuliaMono for programming I’m finally happy with fonts everywhere :).

Are you sure it's not just what you're used to? I look at the Ubuntu font every day and when I look at the comparison posted elsewhere in the thread, Ubuntu looks the most normal to me.

> At the end of the day, a custom font just isn't very important for the vast majority of sites

IMO custom fonts are fine (beneficial sometimes, matching fonts used in any relevant logos and so forth) for titles and other big text, but for body text stick with something basic and/or familiar to the user.

I put Ubuntu first because it's the most beautiful and unique. Frisco and Sagoe are yet-another-Helvetica-clones. You'd think they would have the money to pay for Helvetica... but I guess that's how you stay rich.

Neither San Francisco nor Segoe are at all similar to Helvetica. Apple used Helvetica as the iOS system typeface for years before switching to SF, so I don’t think the licensing cost is the main issue.

Had it licensed from Linotype since the very early 1980s I think? It's literally one of the reasons for the Helvetica's cachet, Linotype were clever with their licences (Apple, Adobe, Xerox & it's a core postscript font).

Also, Helvetica clones exist mainly to get around licencing costs related to physical printers (if your software uses something metrically identical you can just use the existing postscript drivers). SF and Segoe are for UI text, which Helvetica is not suited to (Apple had to adjust the metrics to make it more usable, for example)

Actually, Segoe is a Frutiger clone, not a Helvetica clone. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segoe#Licensing_controversy

Maybe unpopular opinion: I love the Ubuntu font.

>I do this with all my websites. At the end of the day, a custom font just isn't very important for the vast majority of sites.

I'd say a custom font isn't important for any site. Except perhaps a font fountry showcasing their wares.

I do wish OS and/or browser vendors added more agreed system fonts though (pre-installed and ready to go). So that we have a selection of say 100 fonts guaranteed to be on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, FreeBSD... I guess adding emojis anually is more important...

"At the end of the day, a custom font just isn't very important for the vast majority of sites."

I also believe performance should trump other design aspects of a website. This means including using the default Operating System (OS) font stack over a custom font if it means faster page loads.

However, I also recognise that a carefully chosen custom font plays a big part in the aesthetics of a website. It can set the tone of the website as well as giving it a distinctive look that sets it apart from other websites. Can you imagine books, posters, magazines, films etc all set in a limited palette of available fonts? The variety of typefaces available is infinite and the printed word is immeasurably richer for it.

There are ways of limiting the download size of fonts. For example, limiting typeface weights (e.g. 3 weights only: regular, bold, italic) can amount to approx 60kb of downloads in total (20kb per font x 3 using the WOFF2 font format). That might still be too much for many developers, but I suspect that images will be larger (and possibly JavaScript too).

I agree with you at least in theory. But the issue with web fonts is it's difficult to use them in a way that doesn't harm performance and also doesn't cause flashes of unstyled content. Every time I visit wired.com I find the font transition jarring and unsatisfying, honestly I think they'd be better off with system fonts.

Print media just doesn't have any downsides to custom fonts so there's no reason to not use them.

I normally do not use webfonts either, although I do use a cascade of fonts ending in serif/sans-serif to use specific fonts if available. As you say, it’s not very important.

But there is one where it did matter: the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor [1], a data entry and exploration application I built in 2013-2019.

I did try different free fonts, and found that with Ubuntu I could read the data much more accurately so I put it there as a webfont even if I was trying to minimize the amount of data loaded. (Internet bandwidth in Nigeria was not great at the time; many of our users used the application through shared GSM links.) Maybe by now, with the application’s users having better screens and improved font rendering, it would be fine to remove the Ubuntu font. Back then, with fewer pixels, it was the best way to pack information in the screen.

[1] https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/#Nigerian-Oil-Spill-Mo...

The fonts that ship with most Android installs are really uninspiring. That's one platform that really needs better built-in fonts, otherwise the "out of box" typography is pretty dreary -- it's effectively just Roboto which can get monotonous really fast, and a very mediocre (imo) Roman typeface.

I think "boring" is what we should aim for when it comes to system fonts. This way, the typeface will get out of your way and you can really focus on content. Using fonts that have a special feeling works quite well if you want to get attention, so it's good for ads and okay for headings sometimes, but for body text it's better to use a boring font.

Roboto is reasonably boring but the real issue is, on most Android phones it’s the only decent font, so it’s a bit monotonous, but as a font Roboto’s fine.

However the Droid Serif font that ships with Android isn’t boring — it’s just awkward. Blockier than Times New Roman, with serifs that jut out. Reading a page of text in it does make me notice the font — and not in a good way.

I, for one, really like Ubuntu font. However, I would rather prefer it not be used as a default on websites I frequent.

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