Verdana font. Why not?

[Ståle Sæbøe]

I am a bit curious about this.

The graphic design people I work with say it is their preferred font for
web pages. The reason being that it is "kinder" to the eye both in terms
of shape and size.

The HTML "hardcore elititst" profess that it is a useless font because
it is too big compared to other fonts.

Personally I do not care one way or the other, but I generally trust
graphic designers more than programmers and rules lawyers when it comes
to pure design.

It seems to me that the only argument against using Verdana is that a
large number of browsers do not support it and therefore it causes their
pages to render with a very small font.

Can anyone honestly say they do not have the Verdana font installed?

[Felix Miata]

Curt Balluff wrote:

Verdana, Helvetica ,sans-serif; would be my chioce for font-family.
Really bad. Helvetica on Linux is commonly a little over half the size
of Verdana, and Verdana is infrequently installed on those Linux
systems, never by default.
Use em or px
don't use pt

Don't use px either. Without knowing display size, screen resolution,
and DPI you have no idea what it means.
--
"In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you."
Matthew 7:12 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

[Martin Bialasinski]

Ståle Sæbøe <ot*****@tdz.no > wrote:

I observe that many debatants claim that designers "tend" to use it
in a way that makes pages undreadable unless you view them with
default settings, but that is a discussion about implementation
pitfalls (which I will be more careful to observe in the future).

Which is, unfortunately, this is what it is really all about.

The problem is, most designers and the people making decisions about a
website don't understand the characteristic of the web. They apply
things from paper design that are not appropriate on the web.

The usual process goes this:

The designer is given some specifications like "total width of 510px,
navigation column=120px, right column=160px, the area in between for
the content, this here in full width, and below this here as two
columns".

Then the designer creates a mockup in Photoshop fiddling with the font
size so the content fits into the space. After that, the design is
recreated in HTML + CSS and here we go, it has to look like the
Photoshop thing to the pixel, so font sizes are set to make it so on
his screen.

Making the page flexible is never thought about, allowing the user to
view the page in his preferred font size is not in the mind. That is
the problem.

This is how web-sites are created.

Save the small, but hopefully growing bunch of people who can actually
create a flexible design.

Go, spread the word :-)
Bye,
Martin
P.S. Don't change the post's subject at will, the subject of the
discussion has not changed. You are cutting of threading for many. And
if you do change it, please choose a meaningful one.

[Harlan Messinger]

Ståle Sæbøe wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:

The problems with Verdana aren't a question of pure design, which is
why the graphic designers don't have the whole story. By way of
exaggerating the situation so as to illustrate the point: if a font
were configured so that, when "10pt" was specified, the letters were
two centimeters high (or, alternatively, one millimeter high), it
would be a problem, no matter how pleasing the font might be to the eye.

I have browsed the web since before graphic browsers. I have worked on
old and new lap tops and PCs, with huge monitors and tiny displays. I
have never experienced the phenomena you describe.

Since I said it was an exaggeration to illustrate the point, I didn't
expect you would ever have encountered it. Please read what I wrote again.

[Lauri Raittila]

in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets, Martin Bialasinski wrote:

I observe that many debatants claim that designers "tend" to use it
in a way that makes pages undreadable unless you view them with
default settings, but that is a discussion about implementation
pitfalls (which I will be more careful to observe in the future).

No, they look unreadable also with default settings, if those default
settings are correct for user (surprisingly often), and he doesn't have
Verdana installed.
--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.

[SeaPlusPlus]

Lauri Raittila wrote:

Yes. For body text, that is. For other text, it doesn't really matter
what you use. (with body text I don't mean all text in body element, but
all text that makes core of content.)
For body text I maintain that serif fonts only, should be suggested.
This is for readability and that is the whole idea of the body text...
it is to be read!!!
About Verdana, well, I would not use it for anything. But for heading it
is OK for accessibility and usability viewpoints.
True headings could be sans-serif and Verdana lends itself nicely to
application.
No. I would only suggest that do not set body text background to white
(if you specify it, use suitable off-white light colour), and text color
should be very near to black. I have yet to see easily readable site with
inverse colors, but it might be possible as well, but it is more likely
conflict with userstylesheet.
This is all true and BTW correct also... ;-)
Links should blue if possible, while visited should be that purple. But
link colors are not that important

Links should be the same black. Links should be indicated by an
underline. Underlines have no typographic use so work VERY well as a
link indicator. The color of the text for links should be the same as
the text, again, for readability. Also... visited links of a different
color is a big waste... IMMHO...

And finally, DO NOT USE VERDANA FOR BODY... the critics will cry...
"It's too big... WAAAAH!!!" ;-)

Thank you...

Rich

[Martin!]

Felix Miata wrote:

"Martin!" wrote:

could be, if not, you can ignore my reply.
still i would be interested to 'see' an example of your test.

Using only a slight bit of imagination you could understand the problem
by looking at http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/allreschooser.html and
http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/images...v1600x1200.png

The only way to fully understand is to duplicate the described
configuration.

:)

[SeaPlusPlus]

> Lauri Raittila wrote:

Seems like I change my browser default font every month looking for that
perfect screen font. Neither Verdana nor Arial is it, of that I'm sure.
I'm not convinced there is only one, anyway. Sometimes serif is better,
sometimes sans. It depends on the content and how fatigued my eyes are.

Tim wrote:
I spent quite some time fiddling with the supplied fonts trying to find one
that was easy to read on my web browser (that was my main criteria, even
more so than looking brilliant). I settled on Georgia, for Windows.
Unfortunately its weight does waste toner while printing, so I'll probably
configure that differently.
Georgia is an excedllent choice for the screen it is highly readable. My
body CSS is...
(font: medium Georgia, serif;)

The correct print font would be Times New Roman this is the font
optimazed over many many years for print media. My body print CSS is...
(font: 10.5pt normal "Times New Roman", serif;)
I have my own "sore eyes" CSS file to override some websites awful ideas
about what's readable, I apply it when I read a page that makes my eyes
hurt. It makes *all* text the same size (the size I find it easy to read
with), the exception being that headings are a bit bigger than the other
text. It also kills the background and foreground colours, and adjusts the
line spacing. What were web browser authors thinking of when they squashed
the lines closer together than normal? Apart from being harder to read, as
soon as you use characters with accents, etc., they either overlap the line
above, or shove those lines of text further apart than the rest of the
document.

But, in summary, ease of reading depends on a combination of factors:

Font design (it's style, if you like)
Font aspect ratio
Font size
Font weight
Inter-character spacing
Inter-line spacing
Colours

Get them all right, which only I can do for myself, and I find reading to
be a breeze. Get only one of them only a small bit out of kilter, and it
makes reading a lot harder. While that may not be very significant for a
small page, it is for long pages, or where you've spent a long time reading
many pages.

Emulate the look and feel of a book and you'll not be far from the 'ideal'.

Thank you...

Rich

[SeaPlusPlus]

Lauri Raittila wrote:

That depends greatly on what you do with size. If user goes to site that
says 100% Verdana, he gets better font, if he doesn't have Verdana. But
if you say 80% Verdana, then user is very likely getting bad size. With
fonts that won't differ from normal subjective size, you get good results
even if the font is not available

That says what I believe... there is nothing 'wrong' with Verdana...
What's wrong is when it is misused. 80% is a misuse...

And, more importantly, body text should NOT be sans-serif no matter
which font you choose. EVER! ! !

There's is two different issues here.

Thank you...

Rich

[Chris Morris]

Martin Bialasinski <ag********@u ni-koeln.de> writes:

The problem is, most designers and the people making decisions about a
website don't understand the characteristic of the web. They apply
things from paper design that are not appropriate on the web.

The usual process goes this:

The designer is given some specifications like "total width of 510px,
navigation column=120px, right column=160px, the area in between for
the content, this here in full width, and below this here as two
columns".

Then the designer creates a mockup in Photoshop
Not necessarily bad. I've worked with two very good designers who
started their design work that way. In both cases we got a flexible
and usable design out at the end.
fiddling with the font size so the content fits into the space.
This, however, is where it usually all goes wrong; when you get a
designer who doesn't take into account that you might change your
content or even use different content to their sample content.
...snip rest of accurate tale of typical woe...

Very often the result of this is a design that not only falls apart
when someone tries to view it in a way that "wasn't intended" but
*also* falls apart the first time a news item isn't exactly 374
characters long, or someone decides that it needs an extra link in
addition to the five specified in the original design, etc. Or would
fall apart, if it wasn't for the fact that to prevent it one
introduces arbitary rules about the length of news items, etc.

So flexible design has a direct benefit to the client even if the
client *is* willing to say that they don't care about customers with
disabilities/browsers and they'd rather it looked exactly like the
Photoshop version on their browser.

--
Chris

[Lauri Raittila]

in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets, SeaPlusPlus wrote:

Lauri Raittila wrote:

Yes. For body text, that is. For other text, it doesn't really matter
what you use. (with body text I don't mean all text in body element, but
all text that makes core of content.)
For body text I maintain that serif fonts only, should be suggested.
This is for readability and that is the whole idea of the body text...
it is to be read!!!

But on low res, serifs are quite hard to read. So that is not good
advice. On resolution about 120ppi I find serif easier. For 96ppi, I
don't really know. For 72ppi, sans-serif is better. For me. (And I use
96ppi... I keep changing font when reading something...)

People usually prefer sans-serif, but I think I have read about study,
that proved that serifs were as good on normal size. But tiny serif fonts
are killer. So if you ever change font size to smaller, make it as sure
as possible that user won't get serif font.

Links should blue if possible, while visited should be that purple. But
link colors are not that important

Links should be the same black.

No, links should not be black. Black is least likely link color, so even
underlining might not make it apparent.
The color of the text for links should be the same as
the text, again, for readability.
No, it should be different, to make it clear it is link. If it is too
hard to read, problem might be too long link text. Or unsuitable link
color. Links are very important, and should stand out.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html
Also... visited links of a different
color is a big waste... IMMHO...

Visited links must be in different color. Visited link is higly useful
indicator. You might use black here, but it might confuse.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040503.html
--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.