Google Fonts – Learn Beginner https://learnbeginner.com Start Your Tech Journey With Us | Smart Learning, Great Beginning Tue, 06 Oct 2020 13:25:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://learnbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/favicon.png Google Fonts – Learn Beginner https://learnbeginner.com 32 32 CSS Font-display and how to use it https://learnbeginner.com/css-font-display-and-how-to-use-it/ https://learnbeginner.com/css-font-display-and-how-to-use-it/#respond Fri, 08 May 2020 03:05:33 +0000 https://learnbeginner.com/?p=2626 Yesterday we included a custom Google Font on our website and briefly mentioned the font-display option. Let’s dive deeper into what it is and how it works.

In modern browsers, we can use the font-display function.

Font Display options

  • auto: This is the default value, and leaves the decision up to the browser, in most cases, it will be block
  • block: This tells the browser to hide the text until the font has fully loaded. This is the flash you see when it swaps on some sites.
  • swap: Swap, as the name suggests, will start with the fallback font and swap once the font is loaded.
  • fallback: This is a compromise between auto and swap. It will start by hiding the font for a brief period and then go into the swap routine.
  • optional: This is much like the fallback method. It tells the browser to start with a hide and then transition into the fallback font. The nice option here is that it allows the browser to see if the custom font is even used at all. If, for instance, a slow connection appears, they are less likely even to see the custom font.

How to use font-display

As seen in the previous example, we can use it as such:

h1 {
  font-size: 40px;
  font-family: 'Amatic SC', cursive;
  font-display: swap;
}

What is a fallback font?

So we talked about fallback fonts quite a bit, but what are those even?

h1 {
  font-family: 'Amatic SC', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;
}

So in the above example, the custom font is Amatic SC the system font is Times New Roman or Times, so in the case of using swap, we will first see Times New Roman and when the custom font has loaded it will show Amatic SC.

Browser Support

Not all browsers support this, but I encourage you to use font-display. The browsers that don’t support it will decide for you.

Thank you for reading, and let’s connect!

Thank you for reading my blog, feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter, and ask questions and give your valuable suggestions.

]]> https://learnbeginner.com/css-font-display-and-how-to-use-it/feed/ 0 How to use Google Fonts in your next web design project https://learnbeginner.com/how-to-use-google-fonts-in-your-next-web-design-project/ https://learnbeginner.com/how-to-use-google-fonts-in-your-next-web-design-project/#comments Thu, 07 May 2020 14:39:41 +0000 https://learnbeginner.com/?p=2622 Let’s get started on implementing a custom font for your website.

Finding your Google Font

To find a cool font, we can go to the Google Font library and pick one we like.

Once you have found the one you want, open it up you will see the whole set’s letters and Styles. Google Fonts will allow you to include on our more styles on your website. In my case, I’m using Amatic SC Bold. Click the Select this style button for each style you want. You will see a side menu on the right. It will have a Review and Embed section; in the embed, we can get the code.

Embedding the Google Font in your website

There are two ways of embedding the font into your website

  • <link> attribute; this sets a link like any external stylesheet
  • @import this imports it directly in the CSS

The Google Fonts website will also show you which font-family rule you must apply to each element you want to have this specific font.

Should I use Link or @import?

This is a question that keeps floating around on the internet, and Steve Souders did an excellent job of comparing the two. As his article title suggests,is the best way to go according to him and Yahoo.

Using the Google Font on our website

<head>
  <link
    href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Amatic+SC:wght@700&display=swap"
    rel="stylesheet"
  />
</head>

We embed the Google Font in the head of our HTML file using the following code. This is the code you get from Google Fonts.

Then in our CSS we can do the following:

h1 {
  font-family: 'Amatic SC', cursive;
}

It’s important to use the name as stated in Google Fonts website.

What to think about

So important to note when using Google Fonts, they tend to load slowly, the more you use, the more load time it will add. And Google itself will not like that very much. My suggestion is that you keep it to one custom font. We can use font-display: swap to not interfere with the load, more on this in another article!

Thank you for reading, and let’s connect!

Thank you for reading my blog, feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter, and ask questions and give your valuable suggestions.

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