oh my god, you're right, they just used an f, no wonder I found it so bad! That is really annoying. Enraging even.

The text doesn't use an `f`. If you copy from e.g. the 1700 passage you get `ſ` not `f`.

Probably people are confused by ligatures. Indeed it is a long S.

This is correct. And if you don't like that font's long-s, you can fix it with

document.body.style.fontFamily = "Baskerville";

Baskerville has a nice long-s. TNR is also not bad. Garamond is passable.

thanks for the Baskerville recommendation.

on edit: liked the Garamond better, since the font is a bit thicker, checked it on "ſpake" and was obviously a long S whereas on the thinner Baskerville still looked like an f to me. Although the original text was perhaps too thick for me.

hmm you're right, I guess my eyesight is worse than I thought

I should have noticed, it has a full cross bar, I guess it's my fading eyesight and also the white text of green is perhaps not the best contrast.

It doesn't have such a bar in the article e.g. "swifter" https://imgur.com/a/XwsoVgB

just noted that in reply to my post but repeat here: yeah I was wrong, I happened to look back at Maiſter and my bad eyesight and the resolution made it look like the long s had a crossbar from the t next to it in the default font.

on edit: this was probably where my problem generally was, in lest and Maister and anything where the long s is next to a t it looks very like an f to me, although if I zoom to 170% then it is clear, however at that size it introduces its own reading problems; unfortunately my reading glasses are broken so I just struggled at a lower resolution.

Heck, I still struggle scanning it properly at high resolution so no worries!

yeah I was wrong, I happened to look back at Maiſter and my bad eyesight and the resolution made it look like the long s had a crossbar from the t next to it in the default font.