Forums » Help » Font issues?

(If this is in the wrong forum, please feel free to move it.)

Hiya! I've noticed something weird on some of the templates used on my characters -- the fonts aren't rendering properly! I've already checked to see if it was an issue with Chrome (it isn't), but the fonts are no longer matching their previews as seen on the Choose Template page.

For example, instead of being whatever that lovely, uppercase text-transformed font on the Blood Stone template I've used for Gumiho, it's showing as Arial! I asked someone with a different browser to even screenshot the same page to show me to help confirm if it's a browser issue or not, and it turns out they produced the same results despite using Firefox (which uses a different font rendering system from Chrome, if I remember correctly).

Is anyone else here having the same problem? This doesn't affect all template pages as far as I know, but it most definitely is affecting the Stone templates.

For the record, I'm using the latest version of Google Chrome on Windows 8.1, if for some reason it turns out it has something to do with the issue.

That sort of issue would generally do better as a bug report, since it's not really something that just getting an answer would typically fix.

I just checked that profile though (in Chrome), and I don't see Arial used anywhere (but it might have been fixed before I looked, too!). It all looks correct from my end.

I don't know why that completely slipped my mind!

Anyway, that's a little bizarre -- it hasn't been fixed on my end at all... I guess I'll have to look more into this clientside, then. Thanks for your input, though!

It's true that it might be different, but it's unlikely it's broken on our end OR yours!

Fonts on the internet are extremely tricky. Typically, a computer can only display the fonts that are installed on it. The catch for web designers is that they can never rely on their site visitors to all have the same fonts installed on their computers. In fact, the fonts that are installed by default is different by device, operating system, by OS version, and by year.

That's why many websites (and most of our templates) employ what is known as a "font stack," which is a list of different fonts, from most specific (Ex. "Trajan Pro Bold") and desirable, to least specific (for example "sans-serif", meaning any sans-serif the computer DOES happen to have on hand).

When a browser displays your page, it will try to use the first font that is specified. But if that font isn't installed on the computer, it digs down into the stack and tries the next one. And the next one. Until it finds something that is installed.

Some of the newer templates make use of a single in-browser font to execute fancy titles. This means most people will be able to see that special font without having it installed, but it also means that download time for those templates is higher. It's a balancing act between looking "pixel perfect" and identical to everyone who looks, and looking potentially a bit different but keeping performance high. (For the record, Bloodstone is one of our oldest templates, and does not make use of a browser embedded font!)

So, true, the templates do not always 100% match their preview. The preview pics are a glimpse of how they looked on my computer with the particular set of fonts that I've got installed. They may at times switch to other fonts if they don't have the "ideal" one available.

Ahh, okay, that all makes sense! I've gotten a new laptop recently, and it doesn't show the same fonts online as my older one did, which... is more than a little frustrating. I'll try re-installing the fonts to see if that helps any on my end.

Thank you so much!