Forum looks bad

[Jazcash]

Please get rid of the 15px font-size and 140% line-height. 1em font-size and 120% line-height is much better. I really hate that a single post with one line takes up around 260px of space on my screen making threads with lots of discussion and posts an absolute nightmare to scroll through.

It was bad enough with avatars making posts higher than they should be, thank god we don't have signatures enabled. No wonder forums are a dying concept, I can see more text content on Facebook in a tiny, single column view than I can on like a whole thread page here.

Wider forum is nice btw.

Edit: Come to think of it, I think most the whitespace comes from margins on things like quote blocks and </br>'s

[PepeAmpere]

I have no idea what is topic whatsoever, i asume its the usual (resistance against change in genral) ...

Don't assume, read at least. I dont care about this forum changes. Just font. This is not detail if you dont see difference between "l" and "i" . Make it readable, use font, that is not fucked on many computers (not just mine - if it would be only my PC, I shut up).

[malric]

I checked on 4 computers (Arch, CentOS, Windows 7 and Windows 8 ) and the fonts looked normal/ok for me.

[PepeAmpere]

I checked on 4 computers (Arch, CentOS, Windows 7 and Windows 8 ) and the fonts looked normal/ok for me.

I hope "4 work" isn't the argument of same value as "4 don't work". At least for people who make websites.

[smoth]

What is your OS
What is your browser

[PepeAmpere]

"my" not working computers

winXP 64bit - firefox (29), chrome, opera, ie8
win7 - firefox(v?)
winXP SP3 - firefox(v?), chrome, ie
some ubuntu 14 something - conqueror

[jK]

jK i respect you in some ways, but in this case your appoach damages many users. Probelms for many, satisfaction for one person and tiny nothing for users of "good" browsers. This is an exemplary example of style of many previous decisions some leaders of this community do, but I hope now everyone can see whos arrogant/ignorant and see value of common sense in any discussion with you and your kind.

?
I never said that I am happy with the situation as is, and I am interested in a solution. I am just unsure what the solution is (switching to Arial imo isn't one).

"my" not working computers

winXP 64bit - firefox (29), chrome, opera, ie8
win7 - firefox(v?)
winXP SP3 - firefox(v?), chrome, ie
some ubuntu 14 something - conqueror

I get the impression that you are one of those who deactivate ClearType on his machines and that it is related to that.
Am I right?

On OS X the current font stack means that the default sans-serif at the end if what's getting used ( helvetica ).

abma wanted to add fallback fonts. My opinion was to make 100% sure all get FreeSans (via adding download url), but as already said abma disliked the download, the time to download and the visual switch. That's why OpenSans isn't an option either.

[jK]

Edit: Come to think of it, I think most the whitespace comes from margins on things like quote blocks and </br>'s

Good point, tried to hide all <br> directly after quotes. And failed, cause there are no css selectors for this case:

Code: Select all

<quote></quote>
<br/> <!-- CATCH THIS -->
foo

<quote></quote>
foo
<br/> <!-- DO NOT CATCH THIS -->
bar

"quote + br" will select both cases :<

edit: found a workaround solution :)

[abma]

abma wanted to add fallback fonts. My opinion was to make 100% sure all get FreeSans (via adding download url), but as already said abma disliked the download, the time to download and the visual switch. That's why OpenSans isn't an option either.

yep, sadly fall-back fonts didn't work well. the switch looked ugly when font was loaded and downloading ~1MB just for a font is a lot. this would have required to add some code for mobile devices / slow internet connections, etc.etc. which is overkill imo. The difference between OpenSans/Arial is very small. maybe we shouldn't select a font at all (=just specify sans-serif) and let the browser select its default font.

using many css features makes it difficult as many devices/browsers have to be tested. the simpler the page/css the better it should work.

[jK]

here a visualization why arial fails

- it's an APNG, so you need either Opera or an imageviewer that supports its animation(Chrome doesn't support apng animations)

edit: also uploaded a static version

-> Esp. bold text looks fat in Arial (see the "Board Index" on the left). Also all glyphs are much wider than in FreeSans - Arial looks `blocky` (see the "Post subject: Re:" on the right).

[PicassoCT]

Can we all agree on Comic Sans on First of April?

[klapmongool]

Why not start with making everything a tad smaller?

[AF]

Open Sans would not be 1MB, the webfont is 15kb per weight, of which I specified several, coming to a grant total of...

75kb

For reference the banner on every page load is 70.5kb, and the logo 20kb. Due to the widespread use of Open Sans ( including on google itself ), the chances of those 75kb being downloaded are small, and are outspent by the rotating banner in the header the moment you navigate elsewhere. Most images on this page are bigger than 100k

For those who do not have FreeSans and who are somehow incapable of acquiring Open Sans for some obscure edge case reason, there are better font stacks than arial and sans-serif to employ.

For most users of this forum the font-stack is essentially arial, sans-serif, and for OS X users it's just sans-serif.

[jK]

Open Sans would not be 1MB, the webfont is 15kb per weight, of which I specified several, coming to a grant total of...75kb

When I download their zip, each ttf is ~200kB. Smaller than ~700 kB for FreeSans, but size doesn't matter here, the delay is. And that is nearly the same for both (http handshake etc.).

[jK]

Okay, played a bit with google's font archive (http://www.google.com/fonts# - chrome only!).
Seems they remove all none Latin chars to further reduce size.

Too bad they don't include FreeSans :<

Tested some of the available fonts ... wasn't happy with any.
Open Sans is very feminine (thin & roundish). Droid Sans isn't simple enough (esp. its 'g').

Only one I would find semi-suitable (still worse than FreeSans) is `Lato`.

[AF]

Downloading the ttf or otf from google isn't the same as grabbing the webfont, Open Sans grabbed via css will download a .woff font. The same with other fonts. Cyrillic glyphs and others are all optional.

I would recommend the google web font loader ( also used with typekit ).

The delay in downloading fonts only happens once then it doesn't happen again until the cache is cleared. So if I load a google service that uses Open Sans, a WP Backend, or any other site that has it, then it's remembered.

For the moment though, personal preferences are irrelevant, there are people for which the font is horribly broken, they should be the prime focus.

[zwzsg]

-> Esp. bold text looks fat in Arial (see the "Board Index" on the left).
- Arial looks `blocky` (see the "Post subject: Re:" on the right).

I like blocky fonts.
I like bold looking fat.

For the moment though, personal preferences are irrelevant

Oh....

[jK]

k after a font hell with ttf, woff, opera, chrome, fontforge
I created a 20kB woff of FreeSans that should fix the rendering.

can ppl who severed under the font issue please test: http://test.springrts.com/

[PepeAmpere]

Thx jK, normal font is ok, bold in post editor is a bit harder to read, but nothing horrible, normal bold in post view is ok, generally all much better.

[AF]

Android issues



On chrome kitkat