Looking back at my first portfolio site and the font mess that took a month to fix

Honestly, I was so proud of my first real portfolio site I built in 2020. I wanted it to feel special, so I picked this really cool, fancy display font for all my project titles. Tbh, I didn't think about it much beyond how it looked on my own laptop. Then I sent the link to a friend and they said half the text was just blank boxes. Turns out, I messed up the web font loading completely. It only showed up right if the font was already installed on your computer. I spent the next four weeks, like every night after my day job, deep in forums trying to figure out @font-face rules, fallback fonts, and why my hosting was blocking the files. I finally got it working, but man, that month felt like forever. Has anyone else had a simple idea for their portfolio turn into a huge technical headache?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie_stone7228d ago

I mean, that reminds me of the time I tried to make a custom cursor for my site. It seemed like a fun idea, but it broke the whole tab order for keyboard users. I spent a week just trying to make it work right before I gave up and took it out.

morgan.cameron27d ago

What exactly broke the tab order? Was it the cursor script messing with focus states, or did it just make the focus ring disappear completely? I've seen that happen when people try to style outline: none without a proper replacement.