[thelist] fonts - ok not to define them?

[michael ensor]

I would have thought that 80% is at the limit of legibility for some
fonts.........

I suspect that you, or  your visitor, are running into the problem of font
aspect ratios [ x-height/font-size ].

Verdana is one of the largest (0.58) and some of the smaller are Gils Sand
and Times New Roman (0.46), the smallest I can currrently recall is Bernhard
Modern at 0.4.

Then throw Mac IE into the mix and older browsers display smaller than PC's
on older browsers, while even later browsers drop the font size to leave
room for diametrical marks if they are present......

Try some of the fonts that I have mentioned, but I would rarely drop below
90% for my main content font sizes, and I always define a font family at
least, even knowing that the user may override..........



----- Original Message -----
From: "Diane Soini"
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 9:54 AM
Subject: RE: [thelist] fonts - ok not to define them?


: I haven't scaled the font size to 8pt. I don't use any points at all. I
: scaled it to 80%. Maybe that is too small, but I don't see how, since
: every Windows machine I've ever looked at the font sizes appear normal
: to me.
:
: Somebody said that Times was the default Windows font. If so, perhaps
: 80% is too small in Times. My questio now is if such a
: difficult-to-read font is the default on so many computers out there,
: is it bad form to not define a font in your stylesheet? I mean, is it
: better usability to define fonts rather than leave them undefined?
:



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