I can't take anyone seriously who uses fonts to display icons (it doesn't work when you turn off foreign fonts!)
Sadly, nowadays thats pretty much everyone. If you want me to care about you (apparently/marketwise you don't), then get your design right. Tip: Design is not looking pretty. Design is this question: Does it work?
I think the case for supporting retina screens + very fast load times far outweighs the amount of users that turn off foreign fonts (it baffles me why you would)
I feel this is a lot like how people used to object to websites that required JavaScript because they had it switched off... If you're going to use the web at all, you're probably going to need to change your setup so icon fonts work, because it's only going to get more common.
There are some very good reasons why you'd want icons in a font. For example, font rendering is well supported by all browsers and very configurable through CSS, and if the default font size is increased for accessibility reasons the icons can also scale.
Is disabling fonts the new disabling Javascript and/or HTML emails? Something done by overly paranoid uber-nerd types and completely ignored by 99% of typical users.
Because I don't want foreign fonts. They are usually either just bad (e.g. worse than my OS font) or render badly.
> It's an edge case, 0.0000001%, ....
You are not downwards compatible. It's an edge case because you make it one by deciding on web "standards" by thoughtlessly applying these short-sighted idioms.
It's a tradeoff, just like not supporting users on IE9- or with JS disabled.
Using sprites instead of fonts to support users with foreign fonts disabled means degrading the product for some other users. Building a polyfill means not spending the time improving something else.
Why do you consider "support everyone" to be obviously better than "build a better product for a subset of users"?
I feel like the undending debates around this issue (most often regarding JS) exist because some people on HN look at it through a business angle where #2 can make complete sense, while some others look at it through a Web ideals angle where anything but #1 is heresy.
Edit: To be fair, the Web ideals remark doesn't seem to apply to you. You rather seem to consider than being pretty is way less important than supporting more people. But why? Being pretty has been increasingly important this past decade, and especially so regarding blogs where being pretty is one of the few differentiators.
> Why do you consider "support everyone" to be obviously better than "build a better product for a subset of users"?
Blogs are my newspapers, thats why. For me accessibility and downwards compatability outweigh the "product" a lot. I have a low-end smart phone for which most "products" are ununsable. Why do people throw away expensive hardware that woks perfectly fine? Because the modern software doesn't run on it.
That is a product that meets my demands: I can read on any device, using multiple clients. I could read this page with a dual-core as well as with a gameboy. Serve TTF font's, maybe I rather use bitmap fonts? Doesn't matter.
I could read that blog using Mosaic, lynx, w3m... kindle displays...
It also works fine for braille terminals.
I guess I am more interested in powerful systems than the pityful products of the App-bubble. After all I am a programmer.
Sadly, nowadays thats pretty much everyone. If you want me to care about you (apparently/marketwise you don't), then get your design right. Tip: Design is not looking pretty. Design is this question: Does it work?