
GitHub.com font changed - dariubs
https://github.com/github
======
rvern
One of the most useful options in Firefox is the checkbox "Allow pages to
choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above"[1], also available as
browser.display.use_document_fonts in about:config. When this is unchecked,
Firefox will ignore all fonts specified by web pages and just use the much-
more-likely-to-be-reasonable choice of default font you have made; and you can
then disable web fonts, which will make pages load faster.

I don't think allowing websites to use specific font names in CSS was ever a
good idea. It would have been better to limit them to predefined family names,
which would map to fonts the user could customize. In any case, this allows me
not to care about the whims of website designers and to always have text in a
readable font. Only one issue: one of the unfortunate trends in web design is
to use web fonts for icons. Not allowing websites to specify different fonts
from the default also happens to break the icons. This isn't enough of a big
deal for me to disable the option, but it's an annoyance worth knowing about.

[1]: [https://clbin.com/bFSlHF.png](https://clbin.com/bFSlHF.png)

~~~
flukus
What happens when sites are using font's for images?

~~~
ori_b
Then it breaks. I can deal with that -- there aren't very many sites that
decide to abuse fonts that way, in any case.

And who knows, maybe one day SVG will actually reliably render correctly in
browsers, and people will use images when they want to display images

~~~
err4nt
The problem isnt so much SVG rendering, its that you can grab an icon font
with 400 icons that look great, its easy to add them to places beside text,
like in menus or on buttons.

You can use SVG, but there is no CDN-hosted SVG sprite with 400 icons to
replace things like FontAwesome or Ionicons, so you would have to find all the
SVGs you wanted. Then you have the challenge of getting them the right size
and position beside text in very tight spaces.

~~~
ori_b
You mean like this: [https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-
fonts/](https://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/)?

~~~
flukus
Are there any frameworks like bootstrap that include SVGs?

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mastax

        apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Fira Sans", "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"
        Helvetica, arial, nimbussansl, liberationsans, freesans, clean, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"
        sans-serif
    

Seems like they're just trying to use whatever decent sans-serif font is
available.

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r24y
Viewing it on OS X, it looks like they're using the San Francisco font. A
little jarring if you're used to seeing the old typeface 20+ times/day, but it
looks good.

Fortunately, the transition seems to have gone a bit better than Medium's:
[https://medium.com/design/system-
shock-6b1dc6d6596f#.j5z5g5g...](https://medium.com/design/system-
shock-6b1dc6d6596f#.j5z5g5gy6)

~~~
toomanybeersies
You would think that a site as large as Medium would think of actually testing
their site on Windows before deploying.

------
f1lt3r
HORRAY! You can use a Chrome extension to put the font back :)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-old-github-
fon...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-old-github-
font/gklibcblhkjlfhfelnbelngjciflknhp/related)

[https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-github-
font](https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-github-font)

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gnuvince
Goddamn, I hate Roboto, it is way too fat by default.

~~~
mayhew
The Bold Roboto [1] just looks awful on my machine. Arial [2] looked much
better, and if they want to use the system font, Ubuntu [3] also looks much
better.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/zfThWXP.png](http://i.imgur.com/zfThWXP.png)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/qngKbGq.png](http://i.imgur.com/qngKbGq.png)

[3] [http://i.imgur.com/77vDhCd.png](http://i.imgur.com/77vDhCd.png)

~~~
topspin
Roboto... that's what got me here. I guess Segoe isn't too bad on Windows, but
Roboto is just tragic. Wow. Really bad.

------
fo747
Bold markdown is basically broken on OSX+Chrome, see before & after
screenshots here, which I tweeted at Github:
[https://twitter.com/MrOlovsson/status/752843094765236224](https://twitter.com/MrOlovsson/status/752843094765236224)

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AnonymousPlanet
You can alias fonts in Linux, i.e., replace one font with any other. Font
Manager is a nice UI for this. I never found anything like it for Windows or
OS X.

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misaochan
How do I get the old font back? Chrome/Windows font is terrible!

~~~
sebslomski
[https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-github-
font](https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-github-font)

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Phil_Latio
Segoe UI on Windows. Roboto looks way better.

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haukur
The idea behind this change seems to be centred around using a modern font no
matter what device the user is on while not sacrificing performance. The
trade-off here is brand consistency, but if the alternatives are to use an
archaic font or a slow webfont, I think this approach wins.

------
armabiz
_Firefox hack:_

There is an extension to override/inject CSS for specific domains:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/stylish/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/stylish/)

Old styles can be grabbed from the: [https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-
github-font/blob/master/...](https://github.com/rreusser/the-old-github-
font/blob/master/extension/content.css)

After applying the following config:
[http://i.imgur.com/hGffN8I.png](http://i.imgur.com/hGffN8I.png) GitHub look
is back to normal.

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nathancahill
Anyone know what it was previously? I'm writing a user stylesheet to change it
back.

~~~
vmasto
Helvetica on OSX, Arial on Windows.

~~~
Leandros
They also changed the size from 13px to 14px.

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jedireza
Yeah, I'm getting Cantarell rendering on Gnome, it's no San Francisco.

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boromi
Looks terrible on chrome on windows arrrgg why did it have to change

~~~
helb
It's using your system fonts. If they look terrible, it's not Github's fault…

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neelkadia
previous was a lot better.

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ivotron
and there I was trying to fix my Firefox (clearing caches, cookiest, etc.) ...
XD

