On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 04:10:14PM -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
(Richard
Grevers <dramatic(a)xtra.co.nz>)z>):
On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 14:31:52 -0600, Lee Daniel Crocker
<lee(a)piclab.com> wrote:
- Article text should be in high-contrast colors
that are not so
overly loud they induce eye strain, and serifed fonts are
preferred for readability.
<Klaxon sound>
From my personal experience I strongly disagree with this. I side with the
various research studies which show that whilst serifed fonts provide
better readability on paper, sans-serif is more readable on screen.
In addition, typefances with metrics that depart considerably from the norm
(such as verdana) are best avoided. (My personal favourite is Trebuchet,
which I use for nearly everything).
Perhaps the best solution is that font-family preference should be left
entirely to the user?
The user will always be free to have his browser substitute his own
stylesheets. If a Sans font is clean and readable on screen, that's
good too--that particular point is a suggestion, not a firm requirement.
Trebuchet is nice--do you know if there's any free equivalent? I tend
to use Lucida fonts myself which are easy to find, but I think Bitstream
recently donated some more modern ones to the public we might want to
look into. I certainly don't want us to standardize on anything that
only looks good on Windows machines.
Personally choosing a font, or relying on one, is universally considered
a Bad Idea(tm). If you want a sans font, fine - specify that you want a
sans font in the stylesheet. Forcing a particular font is just a bad
idea - usually the UA will know which font is best.
--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN