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  • #190105
    Paulie_D
    Member

    @chriscoyier

    Did you break something on the forums?

    #190107
    Senff
    Participant

    So retro!

    #190109
    Paulie_D
    Member

    I feel like I’me in an 8-bit world on a 64-bit laptop. :)

    #190115
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    Just tossing up some new styles. The big idea was to fix some of the front end slowness.

    #190118
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    I think I got everything that I can actually control.

    page-speed

    #190119
    __
    Participant

    @chrisburton and I were talking about it earlier. I like monospace for writing comments (especially quick bits of code), but it’s not so great for reading.

    The big idea was to fix some of the front end slowness.

    like, from webfonts?

    #190120
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    I agree monospace isn’t ideal for lots and lots of reading, but my thinking is that this site, for the vast majority of folks, is popping in to snag some code. And the monospace thing is a comfortable transition from a code editor. It is for me anyway. I’ve been doing a ton of reading and writing in Source Code Pro and I think it’s perfectly fine. So now I can use it optimistically, falling back to some other good monospace fonts, and load the webfont in the footer.

    #190153
    Tims
    Participant

    I signed up just to post this…

    I have been a long time lurker and lover of CSS-Tricks but the font change this time round has left me cold.

    Please don’t get me wrong, I love Source Code Pro, but only when it used appropriately. I use it myself in Sublime Text and love the way it removes any ambiguity from code (it makes it quite hard to mix up things like I, L, l, 1 or 0, o, O). Monospaced is also great for code.

    From Adobe:
    “Source Code Pro was designed by Paul D. Hunt as a companion to Source Sans… this family was designed specifically for coding environments”

    Coding and reading environments are very different and using a monospace font for body copy is just wrong. When a font lacks decent (or any) kerning it makes reading body text far more of a chore than it should be and makes titles and headings look utterly terrible. Because good design is so heavily dependant on good typography this ends up making the whole site feel less professional.

    Can you imagine reading a magazine article in a monospaced font? I’m guessing you would find it uncomfortable and even if the content was interesting it would be a struggle to read. Please don’t subject your readers to this type (heh) of bad typography.

    From your previous comments it looks like this decision was largely based on the wish to reduce page load times. Faster page loads mean nothing if the content is not presented nicely (or legibly). Is shaving a few kb or milliseconds really worth using an inappropriate and harder to read font?

    I’m sure many people do come here to snag code so keep Source Code Pro for any code (where it should be and a great choice too). People probably also want to know what the code is doing and will read any descriptions or explanations (I know I love reading articles here) so choose a nice companion font which will compliment it such as Source Sans or, indeed, many others for all non-code. This has the added advantage of clearly separating code from non-code.

    Phew! Please forgive me if this sounded like a bit of a rant as that was not my intention. I consider CSS-Tricks to be a great resource which is doing a lot of good. I feel it is a great shame to see it being let down with sub-standard typography.

    #190174
    Senff
    Participant

    As with every update of CSS Tricks (or any other site I frequent, for that matter), it takes a little time getting used to. Everytime I go “meh!” at first, and then a few days later I’m all good with it.

    Same thing right now. Yesterday, I wan’t very impressed, actually thought it was a joke, or test, or mistake. Now it doesn’t bother me at all anymore, and I’m super OK with it.

    For me, just another thing I needed to get used to.

    #190207
    John
    Participant

    This is really different. Will take some time to get use to if it doesn’t change back.

    #190227
    __
    Participant

    Yeah… I am indeed “getting used to it,” but my concerns stand.

    Also:

    …I can use it optimistically, falling back to some other good monospace fonts, and load the webfont in the footer.

    The same holds for sans (or other body) fonts, so I don’t think this should really be a consideration.

    Chris, if you like it this way, that’s cool. I don’t mind, and it’s your decision anyway. I just wanted to share my thought that readability —the whole “look and feel” of the site, in fact— would benefit from a different font.

    #190236
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    I fully expect to be convinced to switch it to something else haha. I’m just getting a kick out of it, I think it’s kinda interesting. I am starting to actually feel like even reading a few paragraphs in it can be a little slow and difficult, so WE’LL SEE.

    BUT ITS SO NICE to not have to load a custom font in the head. It’s so damn slow and blocking. It’s tempting to just go Helvetica or Lucida Grande just for the speed benefits.

    #190246
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    Changing hosting is hugely non-trivial, but it’s always a possibility, and I’ll consider that during the move. That’s a back-end concern though, which we certainly feel here in the un-page-cached forums. The back-end performance is largely fine though on the rest of the site.

    This font-related stuff is a front end performance concern throughout the site that affects everything everywhere so it’s kind of an even bigger deal.

    #190282
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    @chrisburton I dig your suggestion of Source Sans, so LET’S TRY THAT =)

    #190289
    Paulie_D
    Member

    Some minor font-size tweaks is all I think is needed.

    Indeed…it’s way small for me. I have to zoom up to 125% to really see it properly and I’m at 110% most of the time

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