This was a good read - i struggle with fonts, and found it insightful. I'm always big on usability but its interesting to think that in the end they're often readers above all else, and to optimize around that.
But I do not agree with paying for a webfont library - Not that its a bad idea, but its likely not appropriate for most people.
Google fonts is good - if you stick to the popular ones its hard to go wrong.
I also use this to get some ideas for combinations, all from google-fonts: http://femmebot.github.io/google-type/ if you suck at typography but want your site to look nice, this is a great way to clean things up without much thought.
For me, I've tried to focus on the tone, feeling and readability when looking at fonts. You have to really trace over the letters and feel everything out - or compare how different fonts portray a given letter and which style you want. Also, what font weights are available? if you want bolder or thinner text you'll need a font that has several weights - not all do.
I feel that it can be argued that paying for a font library is a good idea. It is far cheaper than buying individual fonts, which can get expensive quickly. I feel that the Typekit library is ahead of the Google library. The Google library always has felt very stale and bland to me. The Typekit library has a better variety if they dont have as many available fonts as the Google library.
Also their systems to include the fonts into your pages also eliminates the headache for many people of how to include the various font files for a particular family, as well as by which method to include them.
That github link is very useful for people getting their feet wet in typography and seeing how things work together.
You're not wrong - its just that most people aren't THAT serious about it. People that pay for it, or even think about paying for it, give more focus to that area. But for many devs that's simply not going to happen. They'll just go with whatever is free, and to be honest thats perfectly fine.
I would say, if you want to take your sites typography to the next level... pay for a font library. But if you just want it to be better than defaults, plenty to be had for free.
I would say, if you want to take your sites typography to the next level... pay for a font library.
That was the theory, but I'm still waiting to be convinced about it in practice. I check in on all of the major rent-a-font services from time to time, and I'm rarely impressed by their results.
Consider TypeKit's home page. Personally I would not consider some of the fonts and typography they use themselves to be acceptable for professional work.
For example, they're currently using Adobe Clean for a lot of the text, but it has more hinting glitches than an excited child the week before their birthday. They get away with it -- up to a point -- because many visitors probably still have a default browser font size of 16px, but if your default is a bit larger or you zoom the page, the text rendering is awful. (Actually, their whole layout breaks if you set your default font size a bit larger, but that's a separate problem.)
Notice how in the font showcase section, under "THE BEST ARE ON TYPEKIT", all the examples are actually screenshots and almost exclusively of very large text? What happens if you actually look at the samples of a popular Adobe font, say Minion Pro, which they feature there? Well, in tests based on TypeKit's own specimen screen, 3 out of 3 main Windows browsers render it with nasty weighting issues, and even significant gaps in the letter forms in narrow areas. This isn't a problem with either Minion Pro or the hardware I'm using to display it; it renders just fine at the same physical size in InDesign or Adobe Reader. It's a problem with Minion Pro served as a web font by TypeKit.
The quality of web fonts from Cloud.Typography generally seems to be better, but again, even their own home page shows plenty of fonts that either appear blurry or have hinting problems and appear with uneven line weights, uneven spacing, counters closing up, etc. The blurring might be acceptable to Apple users who are used to that style of rendering, but unless your target audience doesn't include anyone who uses other platforms, it's going to look very odd to a lot of people. The other hinting glitches might be unavoidable results of trying to render fonts designed for print faithfully on screen, but they are glitches all the same.
I just don't understand why anyone who cares about the quality of their work would voluntarily choose these options, and pay for them, when you can have similar or better looking rendering for free with native system fonts on most platforms these days and with several of the standards from Google Fonts if you want a change.
Whenever I give web typography advice to people, I tell them they should listen to me because I'm a huge type nerd, but I also tell them that they shouldn't listen to me because I'm a huge type nerd.
For me, Typekit is a godsend, but the fact is that for most people it's not necessary.
But I do not agree with paying for a webfont library - Not that its a bad idea, but its likely not appropriate for most people.
Google fonts is good - if you stick to the popular ones its hard to go wrong.
I also use this to get some ideas for combinations, all from google-fonts: http://femmebot.github.io/google-type/ if you suck at typography but want your site to look nice, this is a great way to clean things up without much thought.
For me, I've tried to focus on the tone, feeling and readability when looking at fonts. You have to really trace over the letters and feel everything out - or compare how different fonts portray a given letter and which style you want. Also, what font weights are available? if you want bolder or thinner text you'll need a font that has several weights - not all do.