Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Simple Suggestion: Google Fonts for PMs & Misc.

Alright so, as always when I make a suggestion; I have no knowledge of coding or any of that jazz and I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but I haven't seen it around.

It's a pretty simple one, but I'd really really love if we could access the google fonts we have access to when creating templates in PMs or maybe even forum use. Though mostly just private messages as that was my original thought.

Anytime I've tried, the font just defaults to an arial looking font, so I dunno if this is already a thing and I'm just doing something wrong, or it's not actually a thing and my suggestion is actually somewhat valid. xD

Anyway, that's about it, really! I'd just really like the ability to prettify my font when typing up a post or something!

Thanks for hearing me out. c:

((edit: Oh, and just to clarify, I know we can use certain basic fonts like calibri and such, but I mean the 'special' fonts like... rocksalt or something- only one I could remember off the top of my head, sorry. xD))

Just curious, what would the purpose of using Google fonts in PMs be? I understand the aesthetic appeal for it on templates and profiles, but PMs have no customization options other than simple BBCode to begin with. Even if it looks pretty, I personally prefer that the focus in PMs is readability over pleasing aesthetics. I already can't view/use a lot of custom templates with certain Google Fonts just because I can't read the tiny text and overly fancy fonts, having this applied to PMs risks a dramatic reduction in accessibility which is pretty vital for PMs. Character profiles are pretty much optional for interacting with people directly (they are after all primarily info dumps for potential RP partners), but PMs are almost necessary to communicate with others on the site. People who use BBCode to make fonts tiny already make reading PMs problematic sometimes.

Besides that, due to the nature on how Google Fonts work in templates, I'm not sure how this could be implemented. For clarification, right now when you edit a custom template and use a Google Font, you select it from the dropdown and only that particular font is loaded into the page. This means only one (up to three) selected font is loaded and is applied over the entire profile.

If we use BBCode to insert the font, then it means we'd have to load every Google Font preemptively into each PM page just in case the font is used, even when someone never uses a Google Font, because there'd be no way to designate which font should be used in this particular thread. That's a massive bandwith drain in the long run and also slows down site performance dramatically - official profile templates are discouraged from using more than 1 or 2 Google Fonts for this very reason.

I don't know if the benefit of having a custom PM font outweighs the time that would go into designing a new UI and adjusting the current UI to accommodate these changes, plus the added risk of making communication between players more difficult. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm personally not in favor of this!

Also not all Google Fonts work across all internet browsers so if someone was to use them it might break or appear as symbols rather than words.

That is correct! I think especially older phones struggle with this.

This is also why fonts default to 'Arial' and other simple fonts that are installed on your computer. The site only shows what's available on the device, and the basic, most simplest fonts are clear and defaulted to so that things can be read properly. (Most of the coding on the site also adheres to the font hierarchy, where if the Google font fails to load, it defaults to a set of common fonts and ends with 'well, if you don't have anything else, any serif font will do!')

That's cause Kim's a smarty. But not every website does that some sometimes if you come across a Google Font it might appear like boxes and stuff. :X

I'm also kind of iffy about this as well: I could see something like adding a serif font option or two (something basic like Times New Roman), but other than that, I have to second what Sanne's coming from. I love the custom templates, but some of them aren't user-friendly as is. If it echos to PMs, I think it might cause problems for those with poor eyesight. (Like me!)

Readability is key with PMs since a lot of RPs happen there, so unless there's a basic catch all option for simple fonts that can still be read across the board, I'm not for it either.

That's a very fair point you guys, yeah. As I said, I'm not sure how that sort of thing works and had no idea it'd be such a bandwidth drain or anything like that. I never knew why we were limited to only 3 fonts on custom profiles even, so I've learned something today!

I can't say there was any point to it, certainly no necessity, simply that I'm a bit of a font nerd, so certain ones are really a lot more appealing to me, and seeing a nicely written up post in it is pleasing to me! I'm always very cautious of who can or can't read what, and tend to ask my partners beforehand because my go-to for posts is calibri size 2, which I find about 'just right'.

Anyway, I had no idea there were so many down sides to my suggestion. Apologies about that, but thank you all for the enlightenment. n.n;

This is basically what I was going to say; it'd be fun, but the impact would be much harsher than you'd anticipate.