Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Web fonts
Raised as a usability problem by 45 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 36 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Text stays invisible for ages while web fonts loadUnreviewed
20092026- Users on slow connections see a blank page for several seconds while fonts load2025-07-26
- Web fonts render text as a blurry, illegible mess in the browser2022-09-17
- Text stays invisible for 2-10 seconds while other page content has already loaded2021-06-05
Disabling web fonts breaks icons that sites draw with fontsUnreviewed
20092026- Sites override the user's preferred fonts, forcing Arial or Ubuntu and hard-to-read monospace faces2023-03-02
- Icon fonts break when users block web fonts, making the webapp less usable2022-09-17
- Many sites become unusable when Font Awesome fonts are blocked2022-09-17
Text unreadable when custom font CSS breaks in some browsersUnreviewed
20092026- Text renders horribly on some screens, so the commenter must disable fonts to read2022-09-17
- Text becomes unreadable because web designers' custom font CSS breaks in the commenter's browser2020-05-29
- Text is hard to read and fatiguing across browsers and devices2019-02-04
Text shifts as late-loading fonts make readers lose their placeUnreviewed
20092026- Page jumps around as fonts swap in after async loading2026-06-29
- Letters collide when a page's tightened letter-spacing is applied to a fallback font2022-06-09
- Page text shifts while reading when fonts load late, losing place2016-11-03
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 44 complaints
- Page jumps around as fonts swap in after async loading2026-06-29
- Can't tell whether a character is capital I or lowercase l in names and URLs2025-12-11
- Times font is hard to read on low-resolution screens2025-08-04
- Paragraph text becomes annoying when it briefly shows in the wrong font2025-07-26
- Users on slow connections see a blank page for several seconds while fonts load2025-07-26
- Default font size is wrong across displays, forcing the user to manually zoom in and out repeatedly2024-03-14
- Sites override the user's preferred fonts, forcing Arial or Ubuntu and hard-to-read monospace faces2023-03-02
- Icon fonts break when users block web fonts, making the webapp less usable2022-09-17
- Text renders horribly on some screens, so the commenter must disable fonts to read2022-09-17
- Web fonts render text as a blurry, illegible mess in the browser2022-09-17
- Many sites become unusable when Font Awesome fonts are blocked2022-09-17
- Letters collide when a page's tightened letter-spacing is applied to a fallback font2022-06-09
- Selected font without emoji support shows no emoji, with no fallback to another font2022-02-03
- Sites become very difficult to use when web fonts are disabled; icons and layouts break2021-09-21
- Using licensed fonts on the web is too complicated and frustrating2021-09-03
- Text stays invisible for 2-10 seconds while other page content has already loaded2021-06-05
- Disabling web fonts breaks site UIs that use fonts for icons2021-06-02
- Sites force downloading about 700kb of custom fonts, breaking rendering and leaving text hard to read2021-04-05
- Inconsistent stroke widths make the body text hard to read on Windows 102020-12-27
- Disabling web fonts shows unreadable tofu boxes in place of icons2020-12-04
- Text becomes unreadable because web designers' custom font CSS breaks in the commenter's browser2020-05-29
- Users who cannot reach Google wait a long time on a blank page2020-02-23
- Text is hard to read and fatiguing across browsers and devices2019-02-04
- Text stays invisible while large custom fonts download, so content is delayed2018-07-08
- Page stays unreadable for 40 seconds on a slow network while custom font loads2018-07-01
- Blank page for long periods while fonts load, so users give up2016-12-10
- Missing unicode glyphs in system fonts hinder use of sites with icon characters2016-11-03
- Changing fonts on an already rendered page disrupts reading; fonts are often unreadable locally2016-11-03
- Page text shifts while reading when fonts load late, losing place2016-11-03
- Large blank whitespace shows while the page loads, so text can't be read2016-04-29
- Web fonts render worse than locally installed fonts, and the loader downloads them anyway2015-08-28
- Text takes ages to appear because webfonts load very slowly2015-05-19
- Page stays mostly blank while web fonts download2014-02-15
- Page stays blank for several seconds while fonts download on mobile2014-02-15
- Page shows only underlines and no text for 1.5-3 seconds while fonts load2014-02-15
- Text stays invisible for seconds while the page loads2014-02-15
- Browser sometimes loads the wrong font, making news pages unreadable2013-11-28
- Custom web fonts break in some browsers and are less readable2013-05-22
- Page shows no text for 30 seconds until the font loads2013-04-22
- Page text stays invisible or delayed on mobile while webfont files download2013-02-07
- Browser freezes while web fonts load, making the page hard to read and slow to use2012-07-05
- Text stays invisible for ages while web font files load2012-01-09
- Page blocks display for about 20 seconds while downloading 6.5MB of fonts2011-11-15
- Page first shows standard fonts, then jarringly swaps to downloaded fonts a second later2009-07-14