CSS Declaration for Helvetica breaks IE9 and IE10 when using Type 1 fonts.

[vagari]

After doing a bunch of digging I discovered that when there are old Type 1 fonts installed (like Helvetica) Windows can't handle video.js. I'm expecting my job will provide me with an updated copy since our logo is set in it. But not everyone is so lucky. I suggest dropping Helvetica from the video.js style sheets.

[heff]

Thanks for digging into that and figuring out the issue. Forgive my ignorance, but what are Type 1 fonts and why does Windows break on them? It's frustrating that IE wouldn't just fall back to Arial or sans-serif.

Is it both Helvetica and "Helvetica Neue", or is it just Helvetica that breaks it?

I have some aversion to going down to just font-family: sans-serif; and letting the browser pick the font. In some cases we're working with tight spaces (like around the times, 0:00:00) and helps to have some between browsers. Are you saying Arial and Verdana might break it too?

On Mar 12, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Jake Harvey [email protected] wrote:

After doing a bunch of digging I discovered that when there are old Type 1 fonts installed (like Helvetica) Windows can't handle video.js. I'm expecting my job will provide me with an updated copy since our logo is set in it. But not everyone is so lucky. I suggest dropping Helvetica from the video.js style sheets.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[vagari]

You're welcome.

Well basically Type 1 fonts are the old standard from the 80s/90s that Adobe came up with. And it's not exactly all of Windows, Photoshop and other programs can use them. And you can install them just like any other font. But IE9 and IE10 use DirectWrite for font rendering and don't support them. And it seems support won't be added.

I can't say for certain how widespread it would be with Helvetica Neue since I don't have it installed. The article I linked does reference it as an issue.

Well Helvetica and Arial are the defaults for Macs and WinPCs respectively. So nothing should change. But I can understand your concern. One alternative would be use @font-face with something like Open Sans. It'd be an extra http request for videojs so not optimal. But it would be universal across everything, including old versions of IE. Or you could include some conditional comments like Paul Irish and include an override for IE9/IE10. Though I haven't tested that last idea.

Arial and Verdana are TrueType so they would not break things.

What do you think? Hope that's helpful. I've never done a fork/pull request but I'd be happy to give it a try with whatever solution you think is best.

[vagari]

FYI: Apparently Adobe has been "phasing out" Type 1 fonts since 2005. No wonder MS isn't in a hurry to add support back in.

[heff]

Thanks for the explanation. You're right, @font-face and conditional comments aren't ideal, but it sounds like Arial would be a safe solution. I'd feel comfortable removing Helvetica and leaving Arial. If you want to try a pull request that'd be great. Let me know if you get stuck.

Any idea how wide spread this issue? Or can we put a good definition around what scenarios cause this issue for users?

On Mar 13, 2013, at 8:21 AM, Jake Harvey [email protected] wrote:

You're welcome.

Well basically Type 1 fonts are the old standard from the 80s/90s that Adobe came up with. And it's not exactly all of Windows, Photoshop and other programs can use them. And you can install them just like any other font. But IE9 and IE10 use DirectWrite for font rendering and don't support them. And it seems support won't be added.

I can't say for certain how widespread it would be with Helvetica Neue since I don't have it installed. The article I linked does reference it as an issue.

Well Helvetica and Arial are the defaults for Macs and WinPCs respectively. So nothing should change. But I can understand your concern. One alternative would be use @font-face with something like Open Sans. It'd be an extra http request for videojs so not optimal. But it would be universal across everything, including old versions of IE. Or you could include some conditional comments like Paul Irish and include an override for IE9/IE10. Though I haven't tested that last idea.

Arial and Verdana are TrueType so they would not break things.

What do you think? Hope that's helpful. I've never done a fork/pull request but I'd be happy to give it a try with whatever solution you think is best.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[vagari]

Think I got it all sorted. I didn't notice the extra info in the contributing guide so the branch isn't quite named correctly, but I edited the pull request to reference this issue number.

That's difficult to say. I've seen a decent amount of references to it on Google. But it seems to mostly bite designers and developers. Not a lot of end users but I imagine it would directly affect the adoption of videojs if they don't understand why it's failing to load.