Is there a way to get increased contrast from this site?

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I noticed a change recently in this forums site - it's clean look, but the text content is comparatively lower contrast, and as such quite a bit harder for me to read. Is there a theme, option, or control anywhere that I can tweak the default font/theme used across this site for my viewing, so that I can choose something with a slightly heavier/more contrasty look?

I dug around in the profile and settings, and didn't see an immediate option, but I'm not super-conversant with all the possibilities in Discourse.

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I’m not sure about contrast, but I noticed that the font changed recently to have narrower lines.

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Ah, I was wondering if it was just me.

The new look is harder to read, for me.

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Same I would really prefer the site go back to using the system fonts. Users can customize that with custom style sheets but a non standard font should not be the default (imo).

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I believe it's actually using the system font—just not the standard weight.

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The new lightweight font looks great on hi-dpi monitors, e.g. Retina if you're using a Mac, but on a standard 96 dpi monitor it looks... eh, not so great, and is really hard to read.

EDIT: It's hard to read specifically on Windows, maybe not so on a Mac or a Linux machine. Different platforms use different font rendering techniques.

EDIT2: So the corner case that nobody is going to use™ is Windows PC with 96 dpi monitor (100% screen scaling).

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The new font also triggers me, I wish there was a way to go back to the previous one, but couldn't find anything in the site settings. It feels like I'm using Windows or Linux rather than macOS :|

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And yet, font rendering depends on a browser. In Microsoft Edge the new font looks blurry and somehow elusive, and in Mozilla Firefox it looks jagged. Both are hard to read.

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I would also like to see the font reverted to a smaller height and thicker weight.

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it’s not using the system font, on my machine (Ubuntu Linux), it falls back to Segoe UI, which i personally dislike and would prefer to use my actual system font.

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--font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI",
Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;

I can't speak for other setups, but in Safari on Apple platforms that means SF Pro (San Francisco Pro) in its "Light" variant (a.k.a. font weight 300).

It's using size 13.6pt (optical size 28) on my screen, though that's probably smaller than for most folks as I set these Forums to one zoom level below default (⌘-). I mostly view them on a MacBook Air so I can't afford bourgeois luxuries like 15pt text. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I actually experimented with SF Pro a lot on my own website a few months back, and discovered that font weight can have a dramatic difference on the appearance. Less than 350 is a bad idea (IMO). Lower than that, contrast drops too much and the overall appearance is wishy-washy.

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Segoe UI should not be used for content display. It is intended for system UI - menus, buttons, etc. Microsoft recommends Calibri for document text:

These Microsoft guidelines are for apps, not websites, but still.

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I added this to my browser's user style sheet:

/* Swift Forums font weight fix */
html.discourse-no-touch body {
	font-weight: 420 ! important;
}
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14

Font weight seems heavier today.

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Yep, looks like we’re back to the previous text size and weight.

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Indeed CSS font-weight was changed from 300 to 400.

To whoever did this: my old eyes say thank you!

The bold formatting is much more visible as well :+1:

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Discourse support team has updated the fonts with the feedback provided in this thread, if you have additional feedback please let us know. Thanks!

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actually looks even better than it did before the first change, thanks!

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This is much more readable, thank you!

Here are the updated text styles if anyone is interested:

font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "SF Hello", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;
 
font-weight: 400;

Bold now has a font weight of 700.

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Thanks for the quick fix on this! My eyes appreciate it tremendously!

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