
Google Font CDN - miket
https://www.google.com/fonts
======
rkuykendall-com
While I LOVE Google fonts, and use it often, I don't see anything new about
the service and I think most of HN is already well familiar.

~~~
piratebroadcast
Agreed. Am I missing something here? Its google fonts. Big deal.

------
wavesounds
One feature I really like is "Pairings" which gives you a list of fonts that
looks good with the one you selected so you can easily find headline and body
combinations.

To use this feature choose a font and click on the little 'pop out' icon (that
looks like one square on top of another) and then click "Pairings". Here's an
example:
[https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lobster#pairings](https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Lobster#pairings)

------
peterwwillis
Nitpick: It's not a CDN if it can't distribute _my_ content. "Google Font
Service" would be more apt I think.

~~~
Zikes
That doesn't sound right. There are a variety of CDNs out there for things
like javascript libraries that aren't available for you to use for your own
content.

According to Wikipedia [1], a CDN is simply "a large distributed system of
servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet".

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network)

~~~
peterwwillis
That definition sounds overly broad, but i'm having trouble disproving it. I
think I figured out how to describe why it sounds weird in this case.

When you use a car, you're usually driving on public roads. But you don't say
"hey honey, would you like to use the road to get some chinese food?" because
the application you (the user) are using directly is not the road, it's the
car. The car just happens to use the road as a means of interconnection from
home to the chinese takeout place.

There can be many kinds of distributed systems of servers deployed in multiple
data centers across the Internet to serve content to end-users. But often
these serve other functions besides just distributing content. The underlying
principle of a CDN is that it just moves content around, regardless of what it
is.

With Google Fonts, you aren't using a tool to move content around. You're
using an API to control an application that manipulates fonts. It just happens
to be running on a network that distributes the content around in the
background. Google Fonts _uses_ a CDN to give you content, but it's far more
complex than a typical CDN, and your use of it is merely to distribute
content, but to specifically access and manipulate fonts.

------
Zikes
Seems to crash my (Chrome) browser tab pretty consistently after enough
scrolling.

~~~
jpluimers
I've all sorts of crashes when Chrome has to cope with a lot of data. Don't
run my Retina MacBook on 1920x1200 HiDPI any more because of it, and also try
to avoid 2880x1800. With regular 1920x1200 it doesn't crawl when you have some
50 tabs open or so. In the other resolutions especially the keyboard
interaction and overall stability is affected.

