Today we're tilting towards the web with a bit of focus on some of the things we see but would typically ignore because our minds process things in a myriad of ways that can result in us missing something that's right in front of us. Today we're going to be looking at fonts. A lot of people may not know this but fonts have a huge impact on user experience on a platform, at the very least, we've all seen some people with poor handwriting (🤧 doctors) and how we struggle to read their words.
A RELATABLE EXPLANATION
Software engineers are quite intentional about the fonts used on their platform, there are a number of fonts that come preloaded when developing software solutions, in software development, we typically declare a class of fonts for redundancy sake. The thing about web browsers is that they're all made to do different things, because Google Chrome supports a feature in software development doesn't mean that Mozilla firefox or Microsoft Edge will support the feature, this is why we use font families.
FONT FAMILY USE-CASE
Font family basically refers to a set of closely related fonts, the assumption is that if the preferred font isn't supported by the browser the netizen is using, the browser will choose from the remaining fonts to select something it's compatible with. Different browsers mean that your experience on a website with one browser will be different from another person's experience (on a different browser) on that same website, an example is Safari browser and Google Chrome.
IMPORTING FONTS GIVE DEVELOPERS MORE OPTIONS IN CREATING BESPOKE SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
Back to fonts, it's worth noting that there are times when developers don't use the staple fonts of software development, this can be as a result of what was designed by the UI/UX designer or simply because the software engineer wants to try something different. There's something we call importing fonts, it involves downloading a font or specifying the font for a website to be taken from another platform. There are so many fonts out there, Google fonts happen to be one of the most popular fonts being used.
THE TRADE-OFFS OF FONT FAMILIES
There are paid fonts and there are free fonts, if you're wondering why developers have to go through all this just to change fonts, you should recall that I said fonts can largely influence the quality of your experience on a digital platform. Importing fonts while stressful also comes with performance penalties. Anytime a software solution has to fetch resources outside of its file directory or outside of the confines of the software solution, tradeoffs must be made and this is why importing fonts requires careful thought.
FINALLY
By now you've probably guessed it, depending on the location of the font and its size, platforms that import fonts are generally slower than platforms that use default fonts, I've written about things like CDN and cloud computing which justifies why accessing some things can be a slow process. If the font is deployed on a scalable platform and your internet is good, you may not notice the lag. Lastly, it's important to note that users can override the fonts of websites by specifying a font for their device or browser.