seriousbiz

Hello, a general question for mobile web site designers. Do you use web fonts in your mobile designs?

WillR

An important part of mobile web design is speed. Web fonts, although they can look nice, will add a lot of unnecessary download time to a page so I would be reluctant to use them unless they are really necessary. I think most mobile web users would much rather have a faster page load time than some fancy looking fonts... and you need to remembers that's who we are creating these pages for. The end users... not ourselves.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

Evocess

I agree on that. Users doesn't really cares about web fonts as long as it is readable for them then it would be okay, they only want is to have page in a shorter load time.

seriousbiz

Thanks guys!

dantehicks

Personally, I see both opinions having merit. I think it really depends on the business and their clientele.

Of course mobile users expect a fast, efficient experience. But if it's critical to maintaining a brand's integrity, I think it's worth the additional request to pull a web font and make a strong impression.

If a business has built its brand around a style that is not communicated well using a system font - and keep in mind, Android and iOS will not have the same system fonts, further complicating matters - then the brand actually does more damage by not bringing in a proper web font.

Jay Moreno

If you do use web fonts don't go overboard keep it to a minimum like one or two... as Willr has already mentioned each font will impact on your sites load times.

There are numerous tools like google's online mobile speed test that will show how things like this impact your site.

If there's one thing about mobile web development you got to remember its that you need to test, test and test again... for mobile validation, for mobile speed and mobile optimization and readiness... there's zero reason your mobile sites can't validate properly or run quickly - the better performance and validation the better and broader the end user experience.

WillR

I understand your opinion but you also need to remember on much smaller screens those web fonts are going to be much less predominant than on a regular website. So you need to weigh up the impact gained against the load time added to the page to determine whether it's really worth it.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

dantehicks

Absolutely, good points

kayetaylor

I agree with WillR he's right. I handled mobile site, we normally use html and css in designing.... less image and soon because our focus is the loading time the faster the better.