Have the basic font changed in Canvas?

[debra_russell]

Has Canvas made a change to its basic font?

My templates look different. It looks like it may have been changed to Helvetica or Arial or something similar.

[chofer]

Hello  @debra_russell  Thank You for your question.  I had to check our own Canvas environment based on your question.  Yes, I am seeing what appears to be a different font in various places...such as in our "Courses" global navigation menu (specifically the term wording underneath the name of the courses) and also within course pages.  Something seems to have changed over the weekend with the release of the updates that were pushed out on Saturday, May 11th.  I'll contact one of the Community Managers to alert her of this so that she can investigate.  I'll keep you posted.  Thanks!

[debra_russell]

Thanks Chris for getting back so quickly. Yes changes like that can change your whole set up so I hope it can be rectified.

[chofer]

Hi again,  @debra_russell ...

I just finished chatting with Alyson R from Canvas Support.  She has told me:

Yes, that is correct, there has been a change in the font in some areas on Canvas to enhance the user experience. Based on the feedback we receive will determine the implementation of it for the next production release

The ticket number is #04318072 if you are interested and want to reference it if you decide you'd like to also submit a ticket about this.  I'll let the Community Manager know of this, too.  I didn't see anything listed in the latest Canvas Release Notes (2019-05-11).

[tina_busch]

Snap, I just posted the same question  I did a canvas chat and they are looking into it for me. There was a release update on the 11 May but nothing has been documented re a font change.

[debra_russell]

Apparently they did this to "enhance the user experience" but it's not enhancing mine!

[erinhallmark · Accepted solution]

Hi, all,

Lato has been the default Canvas font since 2016, and up until last weekend, our engineers have been hosting the font locally. Now browsers have improved their support for Lato in the full capability that we needed, so a change was made to switch from local font hosting to browser font hosting. This change applies to any user on any browser but fonts themselves should not have changed. You shouldn't even have to clear your cache (but if you want to try it just in case, that's not a bad option just to rule out that behavior).

So if you're seeing any different font anywhere, our engineers want to know about it. If your support case has already been closed, re-open it and ask to have your ticket escalated, please. And please make sure you've included a specific location URL in Canvas where you are seeing the font change.

[UPDATE: This behavior seems to be occurring for users with Windows devices. Our support team has created an engineering ticket to further triage this behavior.]

Thanks!

Erin

[debra_russell]

Thanks for that. I have put in a ticket referring to the one Chris mentioned: #04318072 

Heading styles seem to appear in the Canvas font but regular Paragraph text appears in some other sans serif font like Arial and is very blobby particularly when bolded.

[ronmarx]

On a similar note, Erin‌, I noticed this problem just the other day. I'm using a MacBook Pro and noticed changes from the sans-serif Latoweb to the default serif font. Prior to the May 11 update, Latoweb was recognized, now it's not. Users like me will have to go in and change any inline CSS to "font-family:lato" since latoweb is no longer named within the font family.

[erinhallmark]

Hi, Ron,

Please let us our support team know if you haven't. Our engineers do want to make sure this is working and want to know where it's not. Thanks!

Erin