[ggreer]

I was talking about wordpress.com, not Wordpress blog themes or wordpress.org. Of course the themes are going to go wild and use every possible browser API to customize their appearance. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

I'm surprised you're talking about knock-off fonts, because I think it argues against your position. The portion of users who have installed crappy knock-off fonts is far smaller than the portion of users on slow internet connections (such mobile users), or the users annoyed by the re-flow, or those who run into bugs in the web fonts themselves. Apple, Wired, and Medium have all shipped web fonts that look like garbage on Windows.[1] They didn't notice these bugs for years because they simply don't test on Windows.

So web fonts cause more annoyances and bugs for the majority of users to slightly improve the experience of a tiny fraction of users who have misconfigured their systems. Do you also write code that defends against buggy browser extensions? At some point you have to accept that the user is responsible for their own device. I'm fine admitting that if a user has the gumption to install custom fonts, they also need to be knowledgeable enough to choose good ones.

1. https://medium.com/@ValidScience/two-mysterious-web-font-bug...