System fonts don’t have to be ugly | Iain Bean

System fonts are often overlooked, but they come with a massive list of advantages: environmental, performance, data cost.

using system fonts like Arial and Times New Roman instead of web fonts cuts down on HTTP requests, reducing the amount of data transferred and ultimately reducing CO₂ emissions.
Byte-for-byte, JavaScript is more expensive for the browser to process than the equivalently sized web font

The top 5 fonts given by Iain are: Georgia, Charter, Palatino, Hoefler Text (Apple only), and Segoe UI/Roboto/"system" i.e. the main UI fonts for each OS:

font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, Apple Color Emoji, Segoe UI Emoji;
/* Only supported on Chromium-based browsers and Safari */
font-family: system-ui;

Explore Other Notes

Newer

Skipping skip links

Vasilis puts together an interesting argument for getting rid of skip links, and instead architecting content so that navigation blocks are below the main […]
  • System fonts are often overlooked, but they come with a massive list of advantages: environmental, performance, data […]
  • Murray Adcock.
Journal permalink

Made By Me, But Made Possible By:

CMS:

Build: Gatsby

Deployment: GitHub

Hosting: Netlify

Connect With Me:

Twitter Twitter

Instagram Instragram

500px 500px

GitHub GitHub

Keep Up To Date:

All Posts RSS feed.

Articles RSS feed.

Journal RSS feed.

Notes RSS feed.