[myfonj]

> esoteric browser prefs

That hurts. I see where you are standing, and can confirm you expressed opinion of the contemporary majority of browser users, but man, how sad it that. The attitude diverged by a light years, when "Setting preferred fonts for generic font families" is now "esoteric". (Web) browsers ("user agents") came to existence with these capabilities in mind, and even now are build around the principle of "preferences reconciliation" between defaults, author and user (as opposed to simple "display what author dictates"). And default font choice is probably the very first aspect it ever had to handle.

(Or were you referring to some other "pref"?)

[ryandrake]

Browsers have ceded way too much control to web designers. The user should be in control. When it comes to what fonts the computer uses, the text size, the color scheme, the user preference should be able to easily override the web site's code. Who's computer is it, anyway?

[tracker1]

I'd be pretty over the moon if the browser supported the following preferences... especially given the number of electron or otherwise browser embedded UI options..

    system.font.primary
    system.font.header
    system.font.monospace
    system.colors.foreground
    system.colors.background
    system.colors.header
    system.colors.highlight
    system.colors.accent

It might be reasonable to have more than this, and the accent and highlight color may or may not be the same color... but it would go a long way towards matching the system defaults, with appropriate css variables injected as well.

[xp84]

The branding people have definitely won this war here. I agree with you, but the answer to your final question is, sadly these days, never the user or the supposed owner of the hardware. I think it’s pretty easy to argue today that when you boot a computer or phone, it belongs to Apple or Microsoft or Google. When you open a website or “app,“ the computer temporarily belongs to its developer. The fact that even browsers don’t have a built-in, simple-to-configure option to toggle persistent cookies on or off per website, opt-in, of course, is all the evidence you need of that for the web. None of this is OK with me, but it’s the world we have now.

[xigoi]

The problem is that most fonts don’t support basic OpenType features. I make heavy use of small caps on my websites (they are IMO criminally underrated). If I were not using a custom font, most users would get hideous “synthetic” small caps.

[tln]

The esoteric part is the combination of "Setting preferred fonts for generic font families" AND the security adjustments necessary to trigger "Request for font XYZ blocked at visibility level 2"

Sure if you want to set browser prefs for fonts, go for it. It'll make the OG sites with almost no stylesheet a little more readable (looking at you, wiki.c2.com). But you should not expect or ask web page authors to not use their preferred fonts. If you want to override web page fonts, use a more invasive or pervasive tool.

Font/page size preferences, on the other hand, web page authors should respect and do a better job with.

[tracker1]

It's mixed bag... the designer of a given website has an intended look/feel and style... if you override that you can do as you like, but it's not like the author's intent should always simply be dismissed.

Beyond this, not every web developer expressly wants to burden a browser to a specific web font payload when they have a close/suitable match where this modern font stack is good enough in terms of design intent.

Third, if all else fails, the user sees their own selected default... I'm not sure that I understand the objection here... As long as appropriate semantic markup and the font is one that actually scales to appropriate px/pt then it should be fine. If the selected font/typeface doesn't, then it's on the user to select a better default/fallback.

[bigstrat2003]

> it's not like the author's intent should always simply be dismissed.

Yes it is. The designer should always understand that the user is ultimately in control of a web page, and that their (the designer's) vision is not what matters at the end of the day.