A webpage is a bunch of text, if your webpage can't be read with something like "font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;" then you are doing it wrong.
With modern web "application", the chances you see a bunch of text would either be the T&C page, documentation you read, or news website.
These days we shop online as much as we do physically, so I pick two random clothing brand, Uniqlo and Levis. To create the same experience you shop online as you do offline. These two websites employ their font instead of system font, Uniqlo Pro and Helvetica Now.
From a function point of view, blocking those font does not stop you from buying their clothes. But part of the user experience will be lost.
Disclaimer, I am engineer in the media industry and has no association with the two example websites.
I like to print things like Train times and such when heading out, just in case I need to alter plans and tech fails so I can't look up the next option online. When flying on holiday I have a little was of paper with connection details, luggage rules, etc. Printing is increasingly unusable direct from sites/apps so I've taken to either writing my own notes (which has the bonus of saving paper) or taking screenshots (which also saves paper as cropping allows less irrelevant detail & site chrome to be included).
I'm almost nobody in a large number of other respects too though!
If your designer can't make your website work well with one of the hundreds of fonts preloaded on my machine, I don't know what to tell you. If your website looks like crap because your designer couldn't come up with a good fallback font that's still on the designer.
It's like "web colours" all over again. Web designers should work within the constraints of the user agent or they shouldn't design for the web, and one of those constraints is that the font doesn't always look exactly like the designer wants it to look. It's called a user agent for a reason, these days more and more because the source it's rendering is as anti-user as can be.
I have web fonts turned off because I'm sick of text shifting because the particular Arial-but-not-really font a website insists on got loaded in. I've also occasionally had to use reader mode because the "design" was very fancy but practically unreadable.
Does anybody apart from designers actually care?
That's why I disable thirdparty fonts by default and bug our designers when some text overflows in our app, due to some fixed width assumption in CSS, because system native font they did not design for is wider.
This means when it comes to software design, function always trumps form. A tool should never be designed with form over function in mind, it must always be function over form. Any form (design) that impedes the function must be culled with extreme prejudice.
When it comes to remote fonts, they slow down page download and consequently load time, they violate privacy rules and laws, they impede accessibility when fallbacks fail or do not exist (eg: Webdings, aka "icon" fonts), and objectively they only serve as a form of luxury for the website with no regard for end-users.
Most of us also know from experience that software designers by and large prioritize form over function, oftentimes with complete disregard for the function thereof.
So I second grandparent post's opinion: Screw designers. Removing them from the development process will bring about more net benefits than any benefits they might be bringing to the table.
Sure, bad designs that inhibit functionality are bad. But good design that enhances it are better than no design, so removing good designers from a pipeline is a bad thing.
In my opinion, products driven entirely by developers with no design sense are just as bad as those driven by designers with no development sense. The solution involves good teamwork between both parties.
Show example please.
> they violate privacy rules and laws,
Show more example please. Let's not forget when you access a webpage, the server already know what IP address you are connecting form. If the web font is loaded from the same host, the owner of the page does not violate any privacy rules than servicing you the page.
> they impede accessibility when fallbacks fail or do not exist
This is only when it failed.
> Most of us also know from experience that software designers by and large prioritize form over function, oftentimes with complete disregard for the function thereof.
You may have experienced designers who are bad at their job, but it does not mean a good design, including using or not using web font, help deliver the function better.
> So I second grandparent post's opinion: Screw designers. Removing them from the development process will bring about more net benefits than any benefits they might be bringing to the table.
I welcome your view, despite how myopic it is, and I hope you live by your value, which means code using vim/emac, not using any GUI tools, and browse the internet using lynx the text internet browser.
It's an additional resource that needs to be requested, downloaded, and processed by the browser. While the processing will happen either remote or local, local system fonts don't need to be requested and downloaded which saves bandwidth and time (aka faster page load times).
>Show more example please. Let's not forget when you access a webpage, the server already know what IP address you are connecting form.
EU rulings concerning GDPR and remote fonts.
>If the web font is loaded from the same host, the owner of the page does not violate any privacy rules than servicing you the page.
And in fact, this is suggested by the EU as a way to abide by GDPR while using remote fonts. The vast majority of remote font use cases are not served directly by the website, though. It's all a sad state of affairs.
>You may have experienced designers who are bad at their job, but it does not mean a good design, including using or not using web font, help deliver the function better.
Sure.
Thing is, in recent times I've experienced far too many terrible designs and I can't recall even one example of a good design.
User needs and desires aren't being considered by designers, so fuck it, I'm past the point of caring about throwing babies out with the bathwater. Throw them out, nothing of value will be lost.
>I welcome your view, despite how myopic it is, and I hope you live by your value, which means code using vim/emac, not using any GUI tools, and browse the internet using lynx the text internet browser.
The only thing myopic is your attitude. Good designs can exist, but when it comes to modern software design they've all turned horrible. The very fact you are trying to override user complaints with designer desires is indicative that you too consider form over function, which for a tool is nonsense.
I appreciate that you're a designer and an artist and you want to flaunt and exhibit your vision for all to see, and that's fine. Meanwhile, we've got shit to do and we need/want computers to enable us so we can get shit done, and your visions are getting in the way. So please save your passion for the art museum, tools are not avenues for artistic expressions.
Art being one that doesn't factor in greatly, but also has its own subjective definition.
There's design that's for helping the user access and process the information. I like this design, I'm all for it; pro-user.
There's design that's for aesthetic; motif; differentiation for the sake of differentiation. This probably overlaps with "art" and can, and often does, actively work against usage of the site for the sake of 'cool'. Works for people that rate aesthetic over content.
Then there's design for engagement and / or advertising revenue (and I'll include "data slurping" as advertising revenue). In relation to the topic, its likely one of the other design choices is leading to secondary data slurping that the website designer may not be aware of.
With good balance, we should be able to create a world that is both aesthetic and functional.
this has always been the case html provides __suggestions__ css and what not let me interpret those suggestions as I will.
If you want to curate your design experience put it in a pdf for your fanbase and leave my day to day browsing out of it.
You can also A/B test the guillotine vs human executioner. The best option is not always a good option.
Blocking web fonts, zapping away floaty banners and other design irritations via uBlock Origin, and making liberal use of Reader Mode gives me a much more coherent experience of the web.
So you'll keep everything that matters and throw out the stuff that doesn't. Got it!
My browser, my connection, my rules.
Sample post: https://alokgovil.com/understanding-self-reliance/
It's using just Arial and Times New Roman.
By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.