[thelist] fonts - ok not to define them?

Rafael Salazar rsalazar at ucol.mx
Sun Jul 11 12:03:29 CDT 2004


Diane Soini wrote:
> A friend of mine said that the text on my web site is not clear and is 
> difficult to read. I immediately thought maybe he has a Mac and it's the 
> font smoothing, but no, he doesn't use a Mac. I didn't define a 
> font-family (but I did scale down the size a bit) for the site and I do 
> not use any images as text. He said the contrast is ok, but the text is 
> too jagged to read.
> 
> What's the default Windows IE font?
> Is it jagged at certain resolutions or sizes?

	The default Windows font (AFAIK) is Times (Times New Roman), which is not 
the best font for viewing in screen since this kind of fonts is for 'high 
resolutions' (or big size on screen)

> Is it considered poor form to not define a font?

	IMHO only when it's hard to read ;)

> Especially since most people probably do not know they can choose a
> default font? Should I always define a font for Windows users and let
> other browsers retain the default font?

	Again, AFAIK, most (if not _all_) browsers have a Serif font as the default 
one (e.g. Times)  These kind of fonts are better when reading
on paper (printed)  When reading on screen, a Sans type font (such as Arial) 
is better.

> I rather like sites that don't define the font, and I can usually
> recognize them right away since I chose an unusual default font.

	The thing is: who is the site for?  I do not define a default font because 
I build sites myself, so I may skip the step to define one according to the 
site design (trying to make the text easy to read)

	Personally, I normally define Sans-serif fonts for text, but I also add a 
CSS 2 rule defining a Serif font for printing.

To learn more:
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#generic-font-families
-- 
	I hope I've been of some help,
	Rafael



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