Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

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UCyborg
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Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by UCyborg » 2023-01-30, 11:37

Example website

Uses Exo Regular for the most part, renders strange greyish/whiteish combo unless you disable gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled on about:config page. I can make screenshot later and add system details if it's not obvious, I'm not sure if this only shows on some systems, but readability is quite poor out-of-the-box.

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Moonchild
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Re: Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-01-30, 12:06

Site doesn't even load for me. "console.err is not a function"

As for the font issue, there have been a few sites that use badly defined fonts that rely on low-level font-tweaking from CSS to make them readable (in particular fonts with a default weight being super light instead of middle-of-the-pack as they should be). Google pretty much being the culprit again.
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Re: Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by UCyborg » 2023-01-30, 12:35

Doesn't load? That's strange, on my end, I get pure whiteness in the beginning before content finally shows up. I disabled all website altering extensions for this comparison, only the mentioned WOFF2 pref was flipped:

gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled - false
Image

gfx.downloadable_fonts.woff2.enabled - true
Image

There are more differences than you would expect.

I always get the error about console.err though. Is that a typo by the website's developer? Doesn't seem like that even Chromium has it, only console.error.

Edit:
There are more differences than you would expect.
Actually, the missing sidebars on the first screenshot are a coincidence I think, not related to WOFF2 setting. At least they show now after refresh.

Image

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Re: Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-01-30, 13:49

I had to completely disable ABL for the site to load.

Yeah it's a google font, with the known issue some google fonts have. See also: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=28528 for discussion of previous investigation.
There's very little we can do about this because we do not support "variable fonts" at the moment, and it is a problem with the physical font file that overrides the weight set in CSS. Basically it's what looks to be a deliberate setup to favour Blink: CSS weight gets overridden by the font file default weight, and then needs a font tweak to set the weight back to what is intended.
This is the problem with Google making the browser and providing "free" services, holding all the cards to push certain anti-features to the web.

It can be fixed by the webmaster by selecting a different font, fixing the font and serving it locally from their server, or enough people complaining to Google to make them serve fonts that aren't inherently broken.
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Re: Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2023-02-01, 02:24

I wrote DarkReading about it myself, and got the following positive reply:
On 31/01/2023 23:21, Dark Reading Customer Service wrote:
The dev folks are aware of the issue--we are migrating to a new version
of the platform that will address accessibility later this year, though
I don't have a timetable for that.

Thank you for writing to us.

Regards,

Jim Donahue
Senior Editor
So while they won't have a "quick fix" to address Google's broken fonts issue, they do plan to solve it eventually.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
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Re: Do we have a rendering issue with WOFF2 fonts (contrast)?

Unread post by UCyborg » 2023-02-01, 09:53

Cool, so it's not WOFF vs WOFF2 issue. if I understand this correctly, WOFF2 version of the font just happens to have extreme base contrast value in one, negative direction? While WOFF2 in general just means better compression compared to WOFF.

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