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Comment by abjKT26nO8 | Hacker News Reader

>> Leave the page at its default font size and avoid using custom fonts, preferring to use vague selections like “sans-serif” and “monospace”.

> Why? These are all easily customizable by the user.

monospace and sans-serif are customizable. Helvetica isn't. Regarding font size, not that long ago there was a post here from someone who set "font-size: 1.4em" in their CSS, because they couldn't be bothered to set up HiDPI scaling on their system. Mind you this CSS rule doesn't set the font size to anything specific. It tells the browser "whatever size you wanted to use for this text, make it 1.4 times bigger". So if user set say 14px as their preferred font size, it would be 19.6 px instead. That's just asshole design.

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> monospace and sans-serif are customizable. Helvetica isn't.

Sure it is: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-fonts-and-colors...

> So if user set say 14px as their preferred font size, it would be 19.6 px instead. That's just asshole design.

I don't see that as any different from saying "use 19.6px text unless the user specifically overrides it." Maybe the designer just likes big text! If a user doesn't, they can easily make it smaller.

> I don't see that as any different from saying "use 19.6px text unless the user specifically overrides it." Maybe the designer just likes big text!

If the designer wants to make text big, they should first set somewhere a specific value for its size, not go on to "you like your text this way? fuck you, i'll make it bigger than that!". There was no "px" or "pt" size setting anywhere higher in the DOM, so that's effectively what the author was saying to the readers.

> If a user doesn't, they can easily make it smaller.

The user already set their text preferences in browser settings. It's the designer that decided that they will make every user, who made that choice at some point, miserable.

You seem to be talking at cross-purposes with everyone else in this your comment and your grandparent comment.

The point that is being made in the article and by everyone here is that the keywords “monospace” and “sans-serif” allow the user to customise what they want it to mean, whereas specific font names like “Helvetica” don’t let the user choose to use their preferred sans-serif.

No, I'm directly rebutting the argument. Even if the page specifies the specific font "Helvetica", the user can change that.

I see. The only way you can “change that” is by disabling all fonts, and it wasn’t clear that you were referring to that (which is a small part of the relevant config and help).

This approach is problematic when fonts are used significantly: as part of design direction, for example, where metrics matter; or on the large number of sites that use icon fonts—and so all your icon-only buttons are now meaningless gibberish.

Strictly through built–in settings, sure. There are plenty of extensions that will let you override fonts in a more granular way [0] or even override styles altogether [1].

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=change+fo...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=style

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