I run https://certsimple.com: we only do EV certificates, we're the fastest place to get an EV cert, we check as much as we can before you pay us a cent, and our application process is 80 seconds.
Just removing the font-weight: 300 helps tremendously. Personally, I'm becoming less of a fan of external fonts. I've noticed lately that they're often the slowest thing to load on sites that use them (especially Google fonts).
The weight works great on a high DPI display, but on older displays, it just doesn't work. Open on a rMBP or iPad, and it's beautiful. I'm guessing the designers are working on a high DPI Mac.
I'm guessing OS X's font smoothing is more aggressive and makes it look better than Windows'. It also depends on how the font was hinted for Windows, whereas on OS X, the system "knows best" and has its own font smoothing technique.
I downloaded all of Google’s font library and installed it locally, means I can read the fonts without having to load them from Google. Still doesn’t help against fonts with 0.5px thin lines.
I’m on linux, and yes, it does. Opening the font selection menu can take for me, with 7000 installed fonts, about half an hour sometimes. I just don’t do that, instead select fonts by name (I know most of them now).
But you don’t notice it until you open a font selection menu.
That's insane! Guessing you don't use Photoshop. At least, the last version I used (I think CS5), the font selection was weird and, no matter what, required that you open the drop down. Bleh. Haha
I've made some changes to Typekit to thicken things up. Is it better? If not, can you provide details of your OS?
Original:
I'll investigate and fix that now. What OS are you on so I can reproduce it?
It looks this this here in Firefox (http://imgur.com/WRWYzBx) and this in Chrome (http://imgur.com/6dFeQhG) on OS X, testing across multiple Macs here. I'd really like to fix it though! Thanks for the heads up!
We moved from Google Fonts to TypeKit recently, so I suspect it may have happened then.
On the updated version, want to give some actionable feedback:
Not just the weight, the size combined with the weight: 12px in a thin font is too light for a screen, especially done in grey. Going to 16px could really make a difference.
Going with a bigger size gives the scope to use a different, contrasting (perhaps thicker, perhaps thicker and smaller for double-contrast?) font for the headings currently in green.
* Getting older happens to different people at different ages, one of the effects of this means eyes get more temperamental, and this doesn't happen 50+, it happens a lot earlier for a lot of people.
As I said above, the Firefox screenshot looks like a printer that ran out of ink, the Chrome version is slightly better, but look at the letter 'T', that's still wrong, a hairline that falls between pixels. That's only acceptable for text that is not actually intended to be read (thumbnails, mockups, zoomed out stuff, etc).
They offer EV certs, so there's some cost involved in doing the identity verification. I don't think it's $234 dollars a year, forever, but it costs something. And that's actually a pretty competitive price for an EV certificate.
Like the other comment says, the font is way too thin on your site and actually hurts to read on my monitor. Any interest I had in this service is effectively gone now.
Text needs to be legible, please try and stick to normal and bold weights.
These shameless plugs are getting really annoying. We know about you, we know CloudFlare and Let's Encrypt are kinda competitors with their free certificates, but you don't have to comment on each post about them. Really, stop annoying us - it doesn't do you any good, honestly!
These shameless plugs are getting really annoying. We know about you
I for one had never heard of these guys and appreciate the mention. Besides, as far as I can recall, it's never been considered problematic to promote your own service on HN as long as the mention is topical and done tastefully.
In this case, the previous commenter was explicitly asking for advice about how to get certificates more conveniently today, so the replies about existing services that can do so seem quite relevant.
Maybe so, but you know every regular guy driving a regular car would rather have a Ferrari and might even spend time looking at them even though he can't buy one.
You're wrong. EV is a scam. I can afford to buy EV for most of my sites, but I don't do it. Because consumers don't really care. Even HN doesn't have an EV! Ferrari is what everybody wants, EV is a different story! And stop downvoting all my comments - it shows your subpar human material. Downvote my main point and stop right there. No need to go aggressive and try to silence me and not comment further, because you will "punish" me further as well.
I really would not care if any of your sites had EV. And I don't care that HN does not have EV. But I may care whether the place I am going to spend money does have one.
Oh, the commenter asked for the overly expensive EV type? Let's not be the devil's advocate. This is the wrong way to advertise. This is not the beginners corner. You advertise once, twice, three times, people remember, you can search HN - no need to annoy people till the end of the world. The company seems desperate for new business this way anyway.
And this is in Firefox, which renders fonts more bold than other browsers.