font-weight

[Jeff Thies]

I've been specifying font-weights (when needed) numerically.

font-weight: 700 (ie: bold)

I've noticed that this varies from OS to OS.

For example:

..someclass{
font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
font-weight: 500;
}

looks bold on a Mac, and normal on the PC (IE5, Opera 7 and NS7.1).

What's the preferred method for specifying font-weights?

Jeff

[Andreas Prilop]

"Jeff Thies" <no****@nospam.net> wrote:

font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
font-weight: 500;

looks bold on a Mac, and normal on the PC (IE5, Opera 7 and NS7.1).

We have:
100 = x0064 thin
200 = x00C8 extralight
300 = x012C light
400 = x0190 regular, normal
500 = x01F4 medium
600 = x0258 semibold
700 = x02BC bold
800 = x0320 heavy, extrabold
900 = x0384 black

But the Verdana typeface family consists of only four styles: normal,
oblique, bold, bold oblique. So what do you expect when specifying
a non-existent font-weight?

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Andreas Prilop <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

But the Verdana typeface family consists of only four styles: normal,
oblique, bold, bold oblique. So what do you expect when specifying
a non-existent font-weight?

I would expect the browser make its best attempt at approximating the
desired weight the best way it can. But being a realist, I don't expect
the browser's best be very good.

My IE 6 (Win98) shows font weights 100 through 500 all the same for
Verdana, weight 600 bolder, weights 700 and 800 considerably bolder,
and weight 900 even much bolder. On Opera, it's basically the same
except that 600 is essentially as bold as 700 but looks a bit bolder
because the character spacing is bigger. Mozilla shows 600 through 900
all the same.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/