Re:Show HN: Neat, the Minimalist CSS Framework
by alwillis on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @04:42PM
(#35719710)
> system-ui is not suitable for general web content. Apps might have an argument for using it, but general web content should not use it.
I emphatically disagree.
On most platforms, font-family: sans-serif results in Helvética or even worse, Arial, which weren’t created with with the web or screens in mind.
One could argue that a website that has any interactive elements is an app; in 2023, that’s a distinction without a difference. system-ui would work fine for an app or a website.
system-ui also gets a developer great typographical features—optical sizing, extensive internationalization support, small caps, ordinals, etc.—“for free” on current platforms without breaking anything and without downloading a font.
Re:Show HN: Neat, the Minimalist CSS Framework
by SquareWheel on Wednesday April 26, 2023 @11:37PM
(#35723039)
This is a weirdly contentious issue by web devs, but in my experience, system-ui is fine. It's used as the default in popular frameworks like Bootstrap[1], and most of the teething issues have been solved for a while now.
[1] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/adf7b8dc4083b6ddc318e...
(That `box-sizing: content-box` is a good default might be my most unpopular CSS opinion, but writing off system-ui is probably not too far off it. But I care more about it because it’s one that actually affects users, not just developers. Maybe I should get round to pestering browser makers to improve their defaults for the sans-serif generic family so that “proxy for a maybe-prettier sans-serif” goes away as a reason to use system-ui.)