RE: @font-face and slow downloading

 

Boris Zbarsky [mailto:bzbarsky@MIT.EDU] wrote on Wednesday, October 20,
2010 4:56 PM
> 
> On 10/20/10 7:46 PM, Belov, Charles wrote:
> > I find it disruptive when a page changes layout on me after I have 
> > already started reading or otherwise interacting with it 
> (unless it is 
> > directly in response to an intentional interaction on my part).
> 
> The only way to avoid that is to not render anything at all 
> until the fonts are loaded (or for that matter until 
> everything on the page is loaded, right?)
> 

Well, yes and no.  I've learned to wait a second until the page seems to
settle down before I start reading.  I do still get tripped up by
late-loading images that don't have width and height styles or
attributes, and by clueless "helpful" JavaScript that moves my cursor to
the first form field when I am already in the midst of interacting with
the second form field.  But this is one more thing that could lead to a
delay, and if there is a way for me as an end-user to tell the UA "No,
if it can't give the font to me by this time I don't want to have it at
all," I would be all for it. 

This is an accessibility issue for people who are easily distracted, and
it is reasonably possible to specify a way to alleviate it, so I say
specify a way to alleviate it.

max-wait: 5s;

The spec would need to specify that if font download was abandoned was
triggered due to max wait, whether the onLoad event should fire for the
page.

In all honesty, this would not affect me personally as I set my
preferences not to download fonts, but I am concerned about
accessibility in general.

Hope this helps,
Charles Belov
SFMTA Webmaster

Received on Thursday, 21 October 2010 00:19:44 UTC