Appian lets you select a custom typeface to use universally across all sites on your instance. This should be used if your company has a style guide that requires a specific typeface.
Custom typefaces for sites are configured in the Administration Console. This page walks through the process for setting up a custom typeface.
This feature only shows typefaces on web browsers. Appian for Mobile Devices will continue to show the default typeface for the device's operating system.
Font files must be hosted outside of Appian to use this feature. Files can be hosted at any trusted location. You can consider Google Fonts as a source. If your instance is self-managed, we recommend hosting the files at the same domain as your Appian instance to optimize performance.
This feature uses WOFF 1.0 or WOFF 2.0 files. WOFF 1.0 works on all supported browsers. WOFF 2.0 works on all supported browsers except Internet Explorer 11 (IE11). WOFF 2.0 offers the best performance and we recommend that you always add these files if they are available. If your users use IE11, we recommend you add both WOFF 1.0 and WOFF 2.0 files.
Font files typically come in nine weights:
Appian only uses four weights:
These are the only four weights we ask for on the configuration screen. Though font files also come in italic and non-italic, Appian only requires the non-italic format.
You should also consider the languages that your users will need. There is no standard way for font files to be organized: some fonts provide every unicode character (glyph) for multiple languages in a single file while others split the glyphs across multiple files. English characters are typically found in a file labeled "Latin". The additional accented characters used by non-English Romance languages, such as the é, î, ü, are found in a file labeled "Latin-Extended".
Before you begin setting up the typeface, make sure you have a link to the WOFF 1.0 and/or WOFF 2.0 font files ready for every language you need to support in the four weights (300, 400, 600, 700) used in Appian.
If a user tries to type or view a glyph that is missing from the font files provided in the Administration Console, the glyph will still render. Depending on the browser and the set of files provided, the glyph will either render in a different weight or in Appian's default typeface, Open Sans.
For example, if a user fills out a form in Arabic but only Latin files were provided, those characters will render in Open Sans. If a user renders bold text but only the Regular (400) weight file was provided, they will most likely see the text using the 400-weight files, possibly with a bold styling applied.
Let's walk through configuring a typeface. For this example, we will set up Roboto Slab in English and Spanish using font files hosted at Google Fonts. We only have three files to use. The URLs for these font files are as follows:
Weight + Alphabet | WOFF 2.0 | WOFF 1.0 |
---|---|---|
Latin All Weights | https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/robotoslab/v11/BngMUXZYTXPIvIBgJJSb6ufN5qU.woff2 | https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/robotoslab/v11/BngbUXZYTXPIvIBgJJSb6s3BzlRRfKOFbvjo0oSmb2Rl.woff |
Latin-Extended | https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/robotolab/v11/BngMUXZYTXPIvIBgJJSb6ufA5qW54A.woff2 |
To add new typefaces and language groups:
Roboto Slab
.
Latin
. For Name of the second group, enter Latin Extended
.
To make your typeface active and preview the font:
Now all sites are using the Roboto Slab typeface.
If the typeface is rendering but there are performance issues, ensure that the following are true:
If some glyphs are not appearing in the correct typeface, try these options:
F12
. See if there are any console errors related to the font files, such as Failed to decode downloaded font
, Access to the font at [x] from origin [y] has been blocked
, or an error originating from the URL that the font files are hosted at. If so:
There is a small set of typefaces that are available on most modern operating systems. These include:
To add an operating system typeface:
If a user's operating system does not have the specified typeface installed on their system, they will see Appian's default Open Sans.
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