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?
Jul 21 '05
300  18478 
in comp.infosystem s. www.authoring.stylesheets, =?ISO-8859-
1?Q?St=E5le_S=E 6b=F8e?= wrote: Ståle Sæbøe wrote: 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.
Usually, it is just that design people seem to like small fonts, and
Verdana is one of the few that can be read confortably on smallest sizes.
That is of course because Verdana is much bigger font than most others...
BTW, Verdana has disadvantage of using much more space. If you use 85%
Verdana, which I find dimilar sized as 100% TNR, they take as much space
when displaying text. And if you use more than default 1.2 line-height,
difference is even bigger.
And I do prefer 100% TNR to any size Verdana, as it is much clearer,
especially on smallish line height. If I want to fit more in page, I will
use Arial. (for reading www, I don't set body font of website.)
We agree that people tend to like this font for aesthetic reasons. The HTML "hardcore elititst" profess that it is a useless font because
it is too big compared to other fonts.
I don't like to read wrong size text with wrong font. The right font
and size is not fixed even for myself, so when doing empirical test on
myself, I find out that fonts set by author are bad choise, no matter
what they are. The change that author finds perfect font combination does
not exist. It is not even possible for print media, where you can be sure
that font of your choise is available...
This is only a problem for browsers/users that do not have/use Verdana 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.
So do I. But I generally trust typographer more when talking about
laying out text, and avarage HMTL+CSS coder is nearer to typographer than
most web designers. Typographers don't even consider Verdana (it is
disliked even more than Arial). Go to font newsgroup, and suggest to use
Verdana, no matter what purpose, and you see... With totally different
arguments... (most of which I hardly understand)
(many typographers don't even think about possibility that font is not
available, or that it would be appear in different size - even if font is
some obscure font that you used to be able to buy for $1000 from company
that has not been existing in ten years, they recommend it if they think
it is the best)
Try to read a book that is laid out by designer, and you see - even if it
is best print quality on high quality paper, it is harder to read that
avarage newspaper...
Accessibility can sometimes be compromized for the sake of design.
But not when you cause problems for *majority*, or very large group of
users.
If there is one size and font that is good for all, why are all these
designer pages using *different* size?
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.
That is not really as relevant anymore, as it used to be. In few years
ago, when persentage was something like 50%, it was obviously very good
reason.
Statistics indicate that more than 90% of all users have Verdana available.
But some of them might have it as default font, and the fact that it is
available don't mean people are happy with it.
Common accessability options:
Private CSS sheet/Override styles
Will override everything, which is usually bad thing. And there is no way
to locate elements that use Verdana. Only option is to suppress all font
size and family changes, which in other hand will break 50% of pages out
there that don't have heading elements.
This is not usable option for people that don't know much about issue.
Quick resize with wheeled mouse (control-roll)
Is constant action. Not nice. And not available in most browsers by
default. (Opera and IE don't have text zoom by default)
Also, in case mjissing verdana font, text zoom won't work when other font
is used as well.
It seems to me that if the user absolutely does not want to see web
pages in Verdana, he can easily override it and resize his own font to
suit his needs.
No, that is not possible. I tried, and failed. But considerable time on
project. It is possible, of course, all you need is to do is to build
proxy with good AI.
--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Ståle Sæbøe wrote: It leads to a discussuion of wether the user or the designer should
control which font should be used. This is nowhere near a catch 22
unless the best font is the one that noone can use.
You're ignoring a fundamental fact about the web -- "the designer" *can*
*not* control anything. Once the page content is handed off to a user,
his software can do anything it wants to with it. Everything that the
designer specifies is, at best, a suggestion. That's the way that the
web works, at a very basic technical level. There's nothing that you
can do about it -- if you don't like it, your only choice is to not
author web pages.
Dave
On Thu, 17 Mar 2005, Ståle Sæbøe wrote: 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.
Exactly! You are right!
Now you only have to understand that the WWW isn't "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.
No. It's the combination of "font-family: Verdana" with "font-size: 80%".
If you don't specify a font-size and if you know _exactly_ what you
are doing, it may be OK to specify Verdana (and Tahoma). I do it myself:
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...-alphabet.html
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/table7.css
Can anyone honestly say they do not have the Verdana font installed?
[Verdana is a typeface consisting of four fonts.]
Verdana does not come with Solaris 9. Where can I get it (legally)?
A version of Verdana is (or was) available for Mac OS that covers
only the MacRoman character set. A Windows version (How many are there?)
covers WGL4. So which characters are covered by Verdana?
--
Mars, unlike Earth, has no atmosphere.
The Chicago manual of style, 15th ed., p. 362
Ståle Sæbøe wrote: It seems to me that if the user absolutely does not want to see web
pages in Verdana, he can easily override it and resize his own font to
suit his needs.
Given a reasonable browser he can, but will he bother?
A common response when a web page intially appears as an unreadable mess
is for the user to ask himself "do I really want to deal with an
organization that has already demonstrated its incompetence?" and
immediately move on to a competitor's web site. Even if he stays and
wastes time fiddling around to make the site usable to him, the user is
likely to be muttering to himself "goddamn incompetent d3ziiner d00dz"
-- which is not a good way to start a relationship.
Dave
Arne wrote: Once upon a time *Ståle Sæbøe* wrote:
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.
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.
"Ståle Sæbøe" wrote in comp.infosystem s. www.authoring.stylesheets: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.
Graphic design for paper and for screen viewing are two very
different things. Graphic designers who work with a view toward
printing will, as a general rule, not serve you well for screen
viewing.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Ståle Sæbøe <ot*****@tdz.no > wrote: The HTML "hardcore elititst" profess that it is a useless font
because it is too big compared to other fonts.
This is only a problem for browsers/users that do not have/use
Verdana
Consider this:
The Designer has his default font size at factory setting of 12px, the
web font is the factory setting of Times New Roman. He likes Verdana,
so he defines it as the font face for the text. But 12px Verdana is
bigger than other fonts at 12px, so he sets the body font size to 75%,
which gives him a pleasing font height at his screen.
Now here I am. I also like Verdana, so I set it as my default browser
font. My eyes are not the best, so I have chosen font size 15px,
which I find pleasing to read.
Now I visit the designer's web site. The text will be shown in Verdana
at 11px (=75%), which is too small for me to read comfortable. And
this is just the normal text. There are usually elements like remarks,
that get a even smaller font size assigned to.
It is OK to define Verdana as the font face, as the body font size is
set to 100%. And I have not seen a page doing this. They all scale
Verdana down.
Bye,
Martin
Martin Bialasinski wrote: It is OK to define Verdana as the font face, as the body font size is
set to 100%. And I have not seen a page doing this. They all scale
Verdana down.
Then you haven't looked at my site. 100% Verdana ;-)
--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -
Dave Anderson wrote: Ståle Sæbøe wrote:
It seems to me that if the user absolutely does not want to see web
pages in Verdana, he can easily override it and resize his own font to
suit his needs.
Given a reasonable browser he can, but will he bother?
A common response when a web page intially appears as an unreadable mess
is for the user to ask himself "do I really want to deal with an
organization that has already demonstrated its incompetence?" and
immediately move on to a competitor's web site. Even if he stays and
wastes time fiddling around to make the site usable to him, the user is
likely to be muttering to himself "goddamn incompetent d3ziiner d00dz"
-- which is not a good way to start a relationship.
Dave
If he did not mess with the browser in the first place, chances are he
sees the verdana and is pleased with the nice readable product description. This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion. Similar topics | |
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