If a font doesn’t have that one character, another font on the list is tried, and so on. Operating on a level of a character means the browser or the operating system revisits your font fallback chain with every single letter you ask them to print. The second one? What you declare in CSS is only a small part of font fallback.
The first one is that it operates not at a level of a font, but at a level of a character. The only meaningful change was the addition of a few more generic words for UI fonts which gained in popularity only within the last decade (one example is system-ui, which comes with its own font fallback horror story).īut even if font fallback appears old and simplistic, you might be surprised by two things. I’m sad to report it still doesn’t today. Outside of a list of fonts, CSS font fallback didn’t give the web designer more specific control over font fallback: no feedback about which font is ultimately selected, no extra adjustments for size, weight, or letter spacing. You can almost imagine each one coming with a more audible groan of the website's designer, ceding control from a perfectly manicured, often unique font meant to represent the brand or the emotion of the site, to increasingly more generic fonts-reliable, sure, but not that exciting.įont fallback has been there since the very beginning of CSS, in recognition that there was never a time in our history where every single computer came with the same set of fonts. Each further notch is a deeper fallback, and a bigger compromise. If it fails to load-or if it’s taking too long to arrive-the next few recommended fonts are those already popular among users, or installed with various operating systems. The first font listed is often a web font, packaged with the website itself. Just grab whatever generic sans serif you recommend.” Nope? How about an older version of Helvetica? Don’t have any of those still? Fine, just pick Arial. If you don’t have that, use Helvetica Now. “To render this element, use a font named Joanna. The premise is simple: the list gives the browser a chain of command. After all, the font might be updated in the future with more glyphs, or you might simply switch to another font that supports the character you wanted:įont-family: Joanna, Helvetica Now, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif When you copy and paste it, under the hood it remains the original character you wanted to see. It’s a shorthand for “this space intentionally left blank.” It’s not a traditional Unicode character with its own specific code-rather, just a rectangle that is drawn to cover up for the character that should be there. notdef often looks like a simple rectangle, sometimes with a cross inside. And so a font needs to be able to say, “I have no idea what this particular character is supposed to look like.” A computer can display text written by someone else, perhaps long ago, and using a font unknown to its creator, or one that might have not even existed when that text was created. But computers put a strange distance between fonts and text. In the world of metal type, when you hold a letter in your hand you also hold its specific font-and so it’s impossible to ask a font to output a letter it has never heard of. notdef is the original version of font fallback-a rudimentary solution for a problem that didn’t exist when printing was physical. notdef, and the dot is there to signify it’s unlike any others.notdef is a glyph of last resort, one to be used when a font is asked for a character its designer did not bother to draw. Some fonts cover a smaller amount of all the possible characters, and some cover a bigger amountĪt some point, you have to draw the line. Even a simple western font comes with over two hundred glyphs: twenty-six letters of the alphabet plus the same bunch in uppercase, ten digits, symbols, punctuation, accents. This space (sometimes) intentionally left (somewhat) blankĪs a type designer, one of your jobs is to give your font every glyph it needs.Ī glyph is a typographical term roughly meaning a character.
That mechanism helps fonts when they run out of characters, and it’s called font fallback. Moreover, all have one common underlying cause-an important and in some ways very impressive mechanism of computer typography many of us might be completely unaware of. They seem like small bugs that permeate everyday interaction with our tasteless machines.īut these are not bugs, at least not in the traditional sense. These little transgressions can be confusing, but not frustrating enough to spend time dissecting.
(If you actually raised your hand, thank you!) Something tells me there is no one left with their hand down at this point.
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